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CARLYLE'S   LAUGH 

AND  OTHER  SURPRISES 


CARLYLE'S    LAUGH 

AND  OTHER  SURPRISES 

BY 

THOMAS    WENTWORTH    HIGGINSON 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

(£fce  Ctitersibe  preii?  Cambridge 

MDCCCCIX 


COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY  THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  IQOQ 


1-/3 


NOTE 

THE  two  papers  in  this  volume  which  bear  the 
titles  "  A  Keats  Manuscript "  and  "  A  Shelley 
Manuscript  "  are  reprinted  by  permission  from 
a  work  called  "  Book  and  Heart,"  by  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson,  copyright,  1897,  by 
Harper  and  Brothers,  with  whose  consent  the 
essay  entitled  "One  of  Thackeray's  Women" 
also  is  published.  Leave  has  been  obtained 
to  reprint  the  papers  on  Brown,  Cooper,  and 
Thoreau,  from  Carpenter's  "American  Prose," 
copyrighted  by  the  Macmillan  Company,  1898. 
My  thanks  are  also  due  to  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  for  permission 
to  reprint  the  papers  on  Scudder,  Atkinson, 
and  Cabot ;  to  the  proprietors  of  "  Putnam's 
Magazine"  for  the  paper  entitled  "Emerson's 
Foot-Note  Person  "  ;  to  the  proprietors  of  the 
New  York  "  Evening  Post  "  for  the  article  on 
George  Bancroft  from  "The  Nation  "  ;  to  the 
editor  of  the  "Harvard  Graduates'  Magazine" 
for  the  paper  on  "  Gottingen  and  Harvard " ; 
and  to  the  editors  of  the  "  Outlook  "  for  the 
papers  on  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  Julia  Ward 
Howe,  Edward  Everett  Hale,  William  J.  Rolfe, 
and  "  Old  Newport  Days."  Most  of  the  remain 
ing  sketches  appeared  originally  in  the  "  Atlan 
tic  Monthly." 

T.  W.  H. 


CONTENTS 

i.  CARLYLE'S  LAUGH i 

II.    A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT             ...  13 

III.  A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT           ....  21 

IV.  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF         .           .           .  31 
V.    JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER    .          1"          .'    ''    .  45 

VI.    CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN    .           .       '  .  55 

VH.    HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU        ....  65 

vm.  EMERSON'S     "FOOT-NOTE     PERSON,"  — 

ALCOTT 75 

IX.  GEORGE  BANCROFT         ....  93 

X.  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON     .       .       .       .119 

XI.  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        .       .  137 

XII.  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE    .        •        .        -157 

XIII.  A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL,  RUFUS 

SAXTON      .          .          .          .          .          .      "    .  173 

xrv.  ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN        .       .  183 

XV.    JOHN  BARTLETT   .           .           .           .           .           .  19! 

XVI.    HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER  2OI 


viii  CONTENTS 

XVII.    EDWARD  ATKINSON       .  .  .  .  .213 

XVIII.    JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT         .  .  .          .  23 1 

XIX.    EMILY  DICKINSON 247 

XX.    JULIA  WARD  HOWE  ...  28? 

XXI.    WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE          .  .  .          .313 

XXH.    GOTTINGEN    AND    HARVARD    A    CENTURY 

AGO 325 

XXIII.  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  ....  349 

XXIV.  A    HALF-CENTURY   OF   AMERICAN    LITERA-  . 

TURE 367 


I 

CARLYLE'S  LAUGH 


CARLYLE'S  LAUGH 

NONE  of  the  many  sketches  of  Carlyle  that 
have  been  published  since  his  death  have  brought 
out  quite  distinctly  enough  the  thing  which 
struck  me  more  forcibly  than  all  else,  when  in 
the  actual  presence  of  the  man ;  namely,  the 
peculiar  quality  and  expression  of  his  laugh.  It 
need  hardly  be  said  that  there  is  a  great  deal 
in  a  laugh.  One  of  the  most  telling  pieces  of 
oratory  that  ever  reached  my  ears  was  Victor 
Hugo's  vindication,  at  the  Voltaire  Centenary 
in  Paris,  of  that  author's  smile.  To  be  sure, 
Carlyle's  laugh  was  not  like  that  smile,  but  it 
was  something  as  inseparable  from  his  person 
ality,  and  as  essential  to  the  account,  when 
making  up  one's  estimate  of  him.  It  was  as  in 
dividually  characteristic  as  his  face  or  his  dress, 
or  his  way  of  talking  or  of  writing.  Indeed, 
it  seemed  indispensable  for  the  explanation  of 
all  of  these.  I  found  in  looking  back  upon  my 
first  interview  with  him,  that  all  I  had  known 
of  Carlyle  through  others,  or  through  his  own 
books,  for  twenty-five  years,  had  been  utterly 
defective,  —  had  left  out,  in  fact,  the  key  to  his 
whole  nature,  —  inasmuch  as  nobody  had  ever 
described  to  me  his  laugh. 


4  CARLYLE'S   LAUGH 

It  is  impossible  to  follow  the  matter  further 
without  a  little  bit  of  personal  narration.  On  vis 
iting  England  for  the  first  time,  in  1872,  I  was 
offered  a  letter  to  Carlyle,  and  declined  it.  Like 
all  of  my  own  generation,  I  had  been  under  some 
personal  obligations  to  him  for  his  early  writ 
ings,  —  though  in  my  case  this  debt  was  trifling 
compared  with  that  due  to  Emerson,  —  but  his 
"  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  "  and  his  reported  ut 
terances  on  American  affairs  had  taken  away 
all  special  desire  to  meet  him,  besides  the  un 
graciousness  said  to  mark  his  demeanor  toward 
visitors  from  the  United  States.  Yet,  when  I 
was  once  fairly  launched  in  that  fascinating 
world  of  London  society,  where  the  American 
sees,  as  Willis  used  to  say,  whole  shelves  of  his 
library  walking  about  in  coats  and  gowns,  this 
disinclination  rapidly  softened.  And  when  Mr. 
Froude  kindly  offered  to  take  me  with  him  for 
one  of  his  afternoon  calls  on  Carlyle,  and  fur 
ther  proposed  that  I  should  join  them  in  their 
habitual  walk  through  the  parks,  it  was  not  in 
human  nature  —  or  at  least  in  American  nature 
—  to  resist. 

We  accordingly  went  after  lunch,  one  day  in 
May,  to  Carlyle's  modest  house  in  Chelsea, 
and  found  him  in  his  study,  reading  —  by  a 
chance  very  appropriate  for  me  —  in  Weiss's 
"  Life  of  Parker."  He  received  us  kindly,  but 


CARLYLE'S  LAUGH  5 

at  once  began  inveighing  against  the  want  of 
arrangement  in  the  book  he  was  reading,  the 
defective  grouping  of  the  different  parts,  and 
the  impossibility  of  finding  anything  in  it,  even 
by  aid  of  the  index.  He  then  went  on  to  speak 
of  Parker  himself,  and  of  other  Americans  whom 
he  had  met.  I  do  not  recall  the  details  of  the 
conversation,  but  to  my  surprise  he  did  not  say 
a  single  really  offensive  or  ungracious  thing.  If 
he  did,  it  related  less  to  my  countrymen  than  to 
his  own,  for  I  remember  his  saying  some  rather 
stern  things  about  Scotchmen.  But  that  which 
saved  these  and  all  his  sharpest  words  from  be 
ing  actually  offensive  was  this,  that,  after  the 
most  vehement  tirade,  he  would  suddenly  pause, 
throw  his  head  back,  and  give  as  genuine  and 
kindly  a  laugh  as  I  ever  heard  from  a  human 
being.  It  was  not  the  bitter  laugh  of  the  cynic, 
nor  yet  the  big-bodied  laugh  of  the  burly  joker; 
least  of  all  was  it  the  thin  and  rasping  cackle 
of  the  dyspeptic  satirist.  It  was  a  broad,  honest, 
human  laugh,  which,  beginning  in  the  brain, 
took  into  its  action  the  whole  heart  and  dia 
phragm,  and  instantly  changed  the  worn  face 
into  something  frank  and  even  winning,  giv 
ing  to  it  an  expression  that  would  have  won 
the  confidence  of  any  child.  Nor  did  it  convey 
the  impression  of  an  exceptional  thing  that  had 
occurred  for  the  first  time  that  day,  and  might 


6  CARLYLE'S  LAUGH 

never  happen  again.  Rather,  it  produced  the 
effect  of  something  habitual ;  of  being  the  chan 
nel,  well  worn  for  years,  by  which  the  overflow 
of  a  strong  nature  was  discharged.  It  cleared 
the  air  like  thunder,  and  left  the  atmosphere 
sweet.  It  seemed  to  say  to  himself,  if  not  to 
us,  "Do  not  let  us  take  this  too  seriously;  it 
is  my  way  of  putting  things.  What  refuge  is 
there  for  a  man  who  looks  below  the  surface  in  a 
world  like  this,  except  to  laugh  now  and  then  ? " 
The  laugh,  in  short,  revealed  the  humorist ;  if 
I  said  the  genial  humorist,  wearing  a  mask  of 
grimness,  I  should  hardly  go  too  far  for  the  im 
pression  it  left.  At  any  rate,  it  shifted  the  ground, 
and  transferred  the  whole  matter  to  that  realm 
of  thought  where  men  play  with  things.  The 
instant  Carlyle  laughed,  he  seemed  to  take  the 
counsel  of  his  old  friend  Emerson,  and  to  write 
upon  the  lintels  of  his  doorway,  "  Whim." 

Whether  this  interpretation  be  right  or  wrong, 
it  is  certain  that  the  effect  of  this  new  point  of 
view  upon  one  of  his  visitors  was  wholly  disarm 
ing.  The  bitter  and  unlovely  vision  vanished ; 
my  armed  neutrality  went  with  it,  and  there  I 
sat  talking  with  Carlyle  as  fearlessly  as  if  he 
were  an  old  friend.  The  talk  soon  fell  on  the 
most  dangerous  of  all  ground,  our  Civil  War, 
which  was  then  near  enough  to  inspire  curi 
osity;  and  he  put  questions  showing  that  he 


CARLYLE'S  LAUGH  7 

had,  after  all,  considered  the  matter  in  a  sane 
and  reasonable  way.  He  was  especially  inter 
ested  in  the  freed  slaves  and  the  colored  troops  ; 
he  said  but  little,  yet  that  was  always  to  the 
point,  and  without  one  ungenerous  word.  On  the 
contrary,  he  showed  more  readiness  to  compre 
hend  the  situation,  as  it  existed  after  the  war, 
than  was  to  be  found  in  most  Englishmen  at 
that  time.  The  need  of  giving  the  ballot  to  the 
former  slaves  he  readily  admitted,  when  it  was 
explained  to  him ;  and  he  at  once  volunteered 
the  remark  that  in  a  republic  they  needed  this, 
as  the  guarantee  of  their  freedom.  "  You  could 
do  no  less,"  he  said,  "for  the  men  who  had 
stood  by  you."  I  could  scarcely  convince  my 
senses  that  this  manly  and  reasonable  critic  was 
the  terrible  Carlyle,  the  hater  of  "  Cuffee"  and 
"  Quashee  "  and  of  all  republican  government. 
If  at  times  a  trace  of  angry  exaggeration  showed 
itself,  the  good,  sunny  laugh  came  in  and  cleared 
the  air. 

We  walked  beneath  the  lovely  trees  of  Ken 
sington  Gardens,  then  in  the  glory  of  an  Eng 
lish  May ;  and  I  had  my  first  sight  of  the  endless 
procession  of  riders  and  equipages  in  Rotten 
Row.  My  two  companions  received  numerous 
greetings,  and  as  I  walked  in  safe  obscurity  by 
their  side,  I  could  cast  sly  glances  of  keen  en 
joyment  at  the  odd  combination  visible  in  their 


8  CARLYLE'S  LAUGH 

looks.  Froude's  fine  face  and  bearing  became 
familiar  afterwards  to  Americans,  and  he  was  ir 
reproachably  dressed  ;  while  probably  no  saluta 
tion  was  ever  bestowed  from  an  elegant  passing 
carriage  on  an  odder  figure  than  Carlyle.  Tall, 
very  thin,  and  slightly  stooping  ;  with  unkempt, 
grizzly  whiskers  pushed  up  by  a  high  collar, 
and  kept  down  by  an  ancient  felt  hat;  wearing 
an  old  faded  frock  coat,  checked  waistcoat, 
coarse  gray  trousers,  and  russet  shoes  ;  holding 
a  stout  stick,  with  his  hands  encased  in  very 
large  gray  woolen  gloves, — this  was  Carlyle. 
I  noticed  that,  when  we  first  left  his  house,  his 
aspect  attracted  no  notice  in  the  streets,  being 
doubtless  familiar  in  his  own  neighborhood; 
but  as  we  went  farther  and  farther  on,  many 
eyes  were  turned  in  his  direction,  and  men 
sometimes  stopped  to  gaze  at  him.  Little  he 
noticed  it,  however,  as  he  plodded  along  with 
his  eyes  cast  down  or  looking  straight  before 
him,  while  his  lips  poured  forth  an  endless 
stream  of  talk.  Once  and  once  only  he  was 
accosted,  and  forced  to  answer ;  and  I  recall 
it  with  delight  as  showing  how  the  unerring 
instinct  of  childhood  coincided  with  mine,  and 
pronounced  him  not  a  man  to  be  feared. 

We  passed  a  spot  where  some  nobleman's 
grounds  were  being  appropriated  for  a  public 
park;  it  was  only  lately  that  people  had  been 


CARLYLE'S  LAUGH  9 

allowed  to  cross  them,  and  all  was  in  the  rough, 
preparations  for  the  change  having  been  begun. 
Part  of  the  turf  had  been  torn  up  for  a  road 
way,  but  there  was  a  little  emerald  strip  where 
three  or  four  ragged  children,  the  oldest  not  over 
ten,  were  turning  somersaults  in  great  delight. 
As  we  approached,  they  paused  and  looked  shyly 
at  us,  as  if  uncertain  of  their  right  on  these  pre 
mises  ;  and  I  could  see  the  oldest,  a  sharp-eyed 
little  London  boy,  reviewing  us  with  ,one  keen 
glance,  as  if  selecting  him  in  whom  confidence 
might  best  be  placed.  Now  I  am  myself  a  child- 
loving  person  ;  and  I  had  seen  with  pleasure 
Mr.  Froude's  kindly  ways  with  his  own  youth 
ful  household  :  yet  the  little  gamin  dismissed 
us  with  a  glance  and  fastened  on  Carlyle.  Paus 
ing  on  one  foot,  as  if  ready  to  take  to  his  heels 
on  the  least  discouragement,  he  called  out  the 
daring  question,  "  I  say,  mister,  may  we  roll 
on  this  here  grass  ? "  The  philosopher  faced 
round,  leaning  on  his  staff,  and  replied  in  a 
homelier  Scotch  accent  than  I  had  yet  heard 
him  use,  "Yes,  my  little  fellow,  r-r-roll  at  dis- 
craytion  !  "  Instantly  the  children  resumed  their 
antics,  while  one  little  girl  repeated  meditatively, 
"  He  says  we  may  roll  at  discraytion  !  "  — as  if 
it  were  some  new  kind  of  ninepin-ball. 

Six  years  later,  I  went  with  my  friend  Conway 
to  call  on  Mr.  Carlyle  once  more,  and  found  the 


io  CARLYLE'S  LAUGH 

kindly  laugh  still  there,  though  changed,  like  all 
else  in  him,  by  the  advance  of  years  and  the 
solitude  of  existence.  It  could  not  be  said  of  him 
that  he  grew  old  happily,  but  he  did  not  grow 
old  unkindly,  I  should  say  ;  it  was  painful  to  see 
him,  but  it  was  because  one  pitied  him,  not  by 
reason  of  resentment  suggested  by  anything  on 
his  part.  He  announced  himself  to  be,  and  he 
visibly  was,  a  man  left  behind  by  time  and  wait 
ing  for  death.  He  seemed  in  a  manner  sunk 
within  himself ;  but  I  remember  well  the  affec 
tionate  way  in  which  he  spoke  of  Emerson,  who 
had  just  sent  him  the  address  entitled  "The 
Future  of  the  Republic."  Carlyle  remarked, 
"  I  Ve  just  noo  been  reading  it ;  the  dear  Emer 
son,  he  thinks  the  whole  warrld's  like  himself ; 
and  if  he  can  just  get  a  million  people  together 
and  let  them  all  vote,  they'll  be  sure  to  vote 
right  and  all  will  go  vara  weel" ;  and  then  came 
in  the  brave  laugh  of  old,  but  briefer  and  less 
hearty  by  reason  of  years  and  sorrows. 

One  may  well  hesitate  before  obtruding  upon 
the  public  any  such  private  impressions  of  an 
eminent  man.  They  will  always  appear  either  too 
personal  or  too  trivial.  But  I  have  waited  in  vain 
to  see  some  justice  done  to  the  side  of  Carlyle 
here  portrayed  ;  and  since  it  has  been  very  com 
monly  asserted  that  the  effect  he  produced  on 
strangers  was  that  of  a  rude  and  offensive  per- 


CARLYLE'S  LAUGH  n 

son,  it  seems  almost  a  duty  to  testify  to  the  very 
different  way  in  which  one  American  visitor 
saw  him.  An  impression  produced  at  two  inter 
views,  six  years  apart,  may  be  worth  recording, 
especially  if  it  proved  strong  enough  to  out 
weigh  all  previous  prejudice  and  antagonism. 

In  fine,  I  should  be  inclined  to  appeal  from  all 
Carlyle's  apparent  bitterness  and  injustice  to 
the  mere  quality  of  his  laugh,  as  giving  sufficient 
proof  that  the  gift  of  humor  underlay  all  else 
in  him.  All  his  critics,  I  now  think,  treat  him 
a  little  too  seriously.  No  matter  what  his  labors 
or  his  purposes,  the  attitude  of  the  humorist 
was  always  behind.  As  I  write,  there  lies  before 
me  a  scrap  from  the  original  manuscript  of  his 
"French  Revolution,"  —  the  page  being  writ 
ten,  after  the  custom  of  English  authors  of  half 
a  century  ago,  on  both  sides  of  the  paper ;  and 
as  I  study  it,  every  curl  and  twist  of  the  hand 
writing,  every  backstroke  of  the  pen,  every  sub 
stitution  of  a  more  piquant  word  for  a  plainer 
one,  bespeaks  the  man  of  whim.  Perhaps  this 
quality  came  by  nature  through  a  Scotch  ances 
try;  perhaps  it  was  strengthened  by  the  acci 
dental  course  of  his  early  reading.  It  may  be 
that  it  was  Richter  who  moulded  him,  after  all, 
rather  than  Goethe ;  and  we  know  that  Richter 
was  defined  by  Carlyle,  in  his  very  first  literary 
essay,  as  "  a  humorist  and  a  philosopher,"  put- 


12  CARLYLE'S  LAUGH 

ting  the  humorist  first.  The  German  author's 
favorite  type  of  character — seen  to  best  advan 
tage  in  his  Siebenkas  of  the  "  Blumen,  Frucht, 
und  Dornenstiicke  "  —  came  nearer  to  the  actual 
Carlyle  than  most  of  the  grave  portraitures  yet 
executed.  He,  as  is  said  of  Siebenkas,  disguised 
his  heart  beneath  a  grotesque  mask,  partly  for 
greater  freedom,  and  partly  because  he  pre 
ferred  whimsically  to  exaggerate  human  folly 
rather  than  to  share  it  (dass  er  die  menschlichc 
Thorheit  mehr  travestiere  als  nachahme).  Both 
characters  might  be  well  summed  up  in  the 
brief  sentence  which  follows  :  "  A  humorist  in 
action  is  but  a  satirical  improvisatore "  (Ein 
handelnder  Humorist  ist  bios  ein  satirischer 
Improvisatore).  This  last  phrase,  "a  satirical 
improvisatore,"  seems  to  me  better  than  any 
other  to  describe  Carlyle. 


II 

A   SHELLEY   MANUSCRIPT 


A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT 

WERE  I  to  hear  to-morrow  that  the  main 
library  of  Harvard  University,  with  every  one 
of  its  496, 200  volumes,  had  been  reduced  to 
ashes,  there  is  in  my  mind  no  question  what 
book  I  should  most  regret.  It  is  that  unique, 
battered,  dingy  little  quarto  volume  of  Shelley's 
manuscript  poems,  in  his  own  handwriting  and 
that  of  his  wife,  first  given  by  Miss  Jane  Clair- 
mont  (Shelley's  "  Constantia")  to  Mr.  Edward 
A.  Silsbee,  and  then  presented  by  him  to  the 
library.  Not  only  is  it  full  of  that  aroma  of  fas 
cination  which  belongs  to  the  actual  handiwork 
of  a  master,  but  its  numerous  corrections  and 
interlineations  make  the  reader  feel  that  he  is 
actually  traveling  in  the  pathway  of  that  deli 
cate  mind.  Professor  George  E.  Woodberry  had 
the  use  of  it ;  he  printed  in  the  "  Harvard  Uni 
versity  Calendar"  a  facsimile  of  the  "Ode  to 
a  Skylark  "  as  given  in  the  manuscript,  and  has 
cited  many  of  its  various  readings  in  his  edi 
tion  of  Shelley's  poems.  But  he  has  passed  by 
a  good  many  others ;  and  some  of  these  need,  I 
think,  for  the  sake  of  all  students  of  Shelley, 
to  be  put  in  print,  so  that  in  case  of  the  loss  or 


16  A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT 

destruction  of  the  precious  volume,  these  frag 
ments  at  least  may  be  preserved. 

There  occur  in  this  manuscript  the  following 
variations  from  Professor  Woodberry's  text  of 
"The  Sensitive  Plant"  —  variations  not  men 
tioned  by  him,  for  some  reason  or  other,  in  his 
footnotes  or  supplemental  notes,  and  yet  not 
canceled  by  Shelley :  — 

"  Three  days  the  flowers  of  the  garden  fair 
Like  stars  when  the  moon  is  awakened,  were." 

Ill,   1-2. 

[Moon  is  clearly  morn  in  the  Harvard  MS.] 
"And  under  the  roots  of  the  Sensitive  Plant." 

Ill,   100. 

[The  prefatory  And  is  not  in  the  Harvard  MS.] 

"  But  the  mandrakes  and  toadstools  and  docks  and 

darnels 
Rose  like  the  dead  from  their  ruined  charnels." 

Ill,    112. 

[The  word  brambles  appears  for  mandrakes  in  the 
Harvard  MS.] 

These  three  variations,  all  of  which  are  inter 
esting,  are  the  only  ones  I  have  noted  as  uncan- 
celed  in  this  particular  poem,  beyond  those 
recorded  by  Professor  Woodberry.  But  there 
are  many  cases  where  the  manuscript  shows,  in 
Shelley's  own  handwriting,  variations  subse 
quently  canceled  by  him ;  and  these  deserve 


A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT  17 

study  by  all  students  of  the  poetic  art.  His  ear 
was  so  exquisite  and  his  sense  of  the  balance  of 
a  phrase  so  remarkable,  that  it  is  always  inter 
esting  to  see  the  path  by  which  he  came  to 
the  final  utterance,  whatever  that  was.  I  have, 
therefore,  copied  a  number  of  these  modified 
lines,  giving,  first,  Professor  Woodberry's  text, 
and  then  the  original  form  of  language,  as  it  ap 
pears  in  Shelley's  handwriting,  italicizing  the 
words  which  vary,  and  giving  the  pages  of  Pro 
fessor  Woodberry's  edition.  The  cancelation  or 
change  is  sometimes  made  in  pen,  sometimes  in 
pencil ;  and  it  is  possible  that,  in  a  few  cases, 
it  may  have  been  made  by  Mrs.  Shelley. 

"  Gazed  through  clear  dew  on  the  tender  sky." 
"  Gazed  through  its  tears  on  the  tender  sky." 

1,36. 

"  The  beams  which  dart  from  many  a  star 
Of  the  flowers  whose  hues  they  bear  afar." 

"  The  beams  which  dart  from  many  a  sphere 
Of  the  starry  flowers  whose  hues  they  bear." 

i,  81-82. 

"  The  unseen  clouds  of  the  dew,  which  lie 
Like  fire  in  the  flowers  till  the  sun  rides  high, 
Then  wander  like  spirits  among  the  spheres 
Each  cloud  faint  with  the  fragrance  it  bears." 

"  The  unseen  clouds  of  the  dew,  which  lay 
Like  fire  in  the  flowers  till  dawning  day, 


18  A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT 

Then  walk  like  spirits  among  the  spheres 
Each  one  faint  with  the  odor  it  bears." 

I,  86-89. 

"  Like  windless  clouds  o'er  a  tender  sky." 

"  Like  windless  clouds  in  a  tender  sky." 

1,98. 

"  Whose  waves  never  mark,  though  they  ever  im 
press." 

"  Whose  waves  never  wrinkle,  though  they  impress." 

i,  106. 

"  Was  as  God  is  to  the  starry  scheme," 

"  Was  as  is  God  to  the  starry  scheme." 

1,4. 

"  As  if  some  bright  spirit  for  her  sweet  sake 
Had  deserted  heaven  while  the  stars  were  awake." 

"  As  some  bright  spirit  for  her  sweet  sake 
Had  deserted  the  heaven  while  the  stars  were 

awake." 

n,  17-18. 

"  The  freshest  her  gentle  hands  could  pull." 

"The  freshest  her  gentle  hands  could  cull" 

n,  46. 

"  The  sweet  lips  of  the  flowers  and  harm  not,  did 
she." 

"The  sweet  lips  of  flowers,"  etc. 

",  51- 


A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT  19 

"Edge  of  the  odorous  cedar  bark." 

"  Edge  of  the  odorous  cypress  bark." 

n,  56. 

"  Sent  through  the  pores  of  the  coffin  plank." 
"  Ran  through,"  etc. 

Ill,    12. 

"  Between  the  time  of  the  wind  and  the  snow." 

"  Between  the  term"  etc.  [probably  accidental]. 

in,  50. 

"  Dammed  it  up  with  roots  knotted  like  water- 
snakes." 

"  Dammed  it  with,"  etc. 

in,  69. 

"At  noon  they  were  seen,  at  noon  they  were  felt." 
"At  noon  they  were  seen  &  noon  they  were  felt." 

in.  73- 
["  &  "  perhaps  written  carelessly  for  "  at."] 

"Their  decay  and  sudden  flight  from  frost." 

"  Their  decay  and  sudden  flight  from  the  frost." 

in,  98. 

"  To  own  that  death  itself  must  be." 
"  To  think  that,"  etc. 


in,  128. 

:d  no  fu 
ther  than  "  The  Sensitive  Plant,"  except  that 


These  comparisons  are  here  carried  no  fur- 


20  A  SHELLEY  MANUSCRIPT 

there  is  a  canceled  verse  of  Shelley's  "  Curse  " 
against  Lord  Eldon  for  depriving  him  of  his 
children,  —  a  verse  so  touching  that  I  think  it 
should  be  preserved.  The  verse  beginning  — 

"  By  those  unpractised  accents  of  young  speech," 
opened  originally  as  follows  :  — 

"  By  that  sweet  voice  which  who  could  understand 
To  frame  to  sounds  of  love  and  lore  divine, 
Not  thou." 

This  was  abandoned  and  the  following  substi 
tuted  :  — 

"  By  those  pure  accents  which  at  my  command 
Should  have  been  framed  to  love  and  lore  divine, 
Now  like  a  lute,  fretted  by  some  rude  hand, 
Uttering  harsh  discords,  they  must  echo  thine." 

This  also  was  erased,  and  the  present  form  sub 
stituted,  although  I  confess  it  seems  to  me  both 
less  vigorous  and  less  tender.  Professor  Wood- 
berry  mentions  the  change,  but  does  not  give  the 
canceled  verse.  In  this  and  other  cases  I  do  not 
venture  to  blame  him  for  the  omission,  since 
an  editor  must,  after  all,  exercise  his  own  judg 
ment.  Yet  I  cannot  but  wish  that  he  had  car 
ried  his  citation,  even  of  canceled  variations, 
a  little  further  ;  and  it  is  evident  that  some 
future  student  of  poetic  art  will  yet  find  rich 
gleanings  in  the  Harvard  Shelley  manuscript. 


Ill 

A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT 


A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT 

"  TOUCH  it,"  said  Leigh  Hunt,  when  he 
showed  Bayard  Taylor  a  lock  of  brown  silky 
hair,  "and  you  will  have  touched  Milton's  self." 
The  magic  of  the  lock  of  hair  is  akin  to  that 
recognized  by  nomadic  and  untamed  races  in 
anything  that  has  been  worn  close  to  the  person 
of  a  great  or  fortunate  being.  Mr.  Leland,  much 
reverenced  by  the  gypsies,  whose  language  he 
spoke  and  whose  lore  he  knew  better  than  they 
know  it,  had  a  knife  about  his  person  which  was 
supposed  by  them  to  secure  the  granting  of  any 
request  if  held  in  the  hand.  When  he  gave  it 
away,  it  was  like  the  transfer  of  fairy  power 
to  the  happy  recipient.  The  same  lucky  spell 
is  "attributed  to  a  piece  of  the  bride's  garter,  in 
Normandy,  or  to  pins  niched  from  her  dress,  in 
Sussex.  For  those  more  cultivated,  the  charm 
of  this  transmitted  personality  is  best  embodied 
in  autographs,  and  the  more  unstudied  and  un 
premeditated  the  better.  In  the  case  of  a  poet,  no 
thing  can  be  compared  with  the  interest  inspired 
by  the  first  draft  of  a  poem,  with  its  successive 
amendments — the  path  by  which  his  thought 
attained  its  final  and  perfect  utterance.  Tenny- 


24  A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT 

son,  for  instance,  was  said  to  be  very  indignant 
with  those  who  bore  away  from  his  study  cer 
tain  rough  drafts  of  poems,  justly  holding  that 
the  world  had  no  right  to  any  but  the  com 
pleted  form.  Yet  this  is  what,  as  students  of 
poetry,  we  all  instinctively  wish  to  do.  Rightly 
or  wrongly,  we  long  to  trace  the  successive 
steps.  To  some  extent,  the  same  opportunity  is 
given  in  successive  editions  of  the  printed  work; 
but  here  the  study  is  not  so  much  of  changes 
in  the  poet's  own  mind  as  of  those  produced 
by  the  criticisms,  often  dull  or  ignorant,  of  his 
readers, — those  especially  who  fail  to  catch  a 
poet's  very  finest  thought,  and  persuade  him  to 
dilute  it  a  little  for  their  satisfaction.  When  I 
pointed  out  to  Browning  some  rather  unfortu 
nate  alterations  in  his  later  editions,  and  charged 
him  with  having  made  them  to  accommodate 
stupid  people,  he  admitted  the  offense  and 
promised  to  alter  them  back  again,  although, 
of  course,  he  never  did.  But  the  changes  in  an 
author's  manuscript  almost  always  come  either 
from  his  own  finer  perception  and  steady  ad 
vance  toward  the  precise  conveyance  of  his  own 
thought,  or  else  from  the  aid  he  receives  in  this 
from  some  immediate  friend  or  adviser —  most 
likely  a  woman  — who  is  in  close  sympathy  with 
his  own  mood.  The  charm  is  greatest,  of  course, 
in  seeing  and  studying  and  touching  the  original 


A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT  25 

page,  just  as  it  is.  For  this  a  photograph  is  the 
best  substitute,  since  it  preserves  the  original 
for  the  eye,  as  does  the  phonograph  for  the  ear. 
Even  with  the  aid  of  photography  only,  there  is 
as  much  difference  between  the  final  corrected 
shape  and  the  page  showing  the  gradual  changes, 
as  between  the  graceful  yacht  lying  in  harbor, 
anchored,  motionless,  with  sails  furled,  and  the 
same  yacht  as  a  winged  creature,  gliding  into 
port.  Let  us  now  see,  by  actual  comparison,  how 
one  of  Keats's  yachts  came  in. 

There  lies  before  me  a  photograph  of  the  first 
two  stanzas  of  Keats's  "  Ode  on  Melancholy," 
as  they  stood  when  just  written.  The  manu 
script  page  containing  them  was  given  to  John 
Howard  Payne  by  George  Keats,  the  poet's 
brother,  who  lived  for  many  years  at  Louisville, 
Kentucky,  and  died  there ;  but  it  now  belongs 
to  Mr.  R.  S.  Chilton,  United  States  Consul  at 
Goderich,  Ontario,  who  has  kindly  given  me  a 
photograph  of  it.  The  verses  are  in  Keats's  well- 
known  and  delicate  handwriting,  and  exhibit  a 
series  of  erasures  and  substitutions  which  are 
now  most  interesting,  inasmuch  as  the  changes 
in  each  instance  enrich  greatly  the  value  of  the 
word-painting. 

To  begin  with,  the  title  varies  slightly  from 
that  first  adopted,  and  reads  simply  "On  Melan 
choly,"  to  which  the  word  "  Ode  "  was  later  pre- 


26  A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT 

fixed  by  the  printers.  In  the  second  line,  where 
he  had  half  written  " Henbane"  for  the  material 
of  his  incantation,  he  blots  it  out  and  puts 
"Wolfsbane,"  instantly  abandoning  the  tamer 
suggestion  and  bringing  in  all  the  wildness  and 
the  superstition  that  have  gathered  for  years 
around  the  Loup-garou  and  the  Wehr-wolf. 
This  is  plainly  no  amendment  suggested  after 
ward  by  another  person,  but  is  due  unmistakably 
to  the  quick  action  of  his  own  mind.  There  is 
no  other  change  until  the  end  of  the  first  stanza, 
where  the  last  two  lines  were  originally  written 
thus:  — 

"  For  shade  to  shade  will  come  too  heavily 
And  drown  the  wakeful  anguish  of  the  soul." 

It  is  noticeable  that  he  originally  wrote  "down" 
for  "drown,"  and,  in  afterward  inserting  the  r, 
put  it  in  the  wrong  place  —  after  the  o,  instead 
of  before  it.  This  was  a  slip  'of  the  pen  only ; 
but  it  was  that  word  "  heavily  "  which  cost  him 
a  struggle.  The  words  "too  heavily"  were  next 
crossed  out,  and  under  them  were  written  "  too 
sleepily  "  ;  then  this  last  word  was  again  erased, 
and  the  word  "drowsily"  was  finally  substi 
tuted  —  the  only  expression  in  the  English  lan 
guage,  perhaps,  which  could  have  precisely  in 
dicated  the  exact  shade  of  debilitating  languor 
he  meant. 


A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT  27 

In  the  other  stanza,  it  is  noticeable  that 
he  spells  "  melancholy,"  through  heedlessness, 
"  melanancholy,"  which  gives  a  curious  effect 
of  prolonging  and  deepening  the  incantation ; 
and  this  error  he  does  not  discover  or  correct. 
In  the  same  way  he  spells  "  fit,"  "  fitt,"  having 
perhaps  in  mind  the  "fytte"  of  the  earlier  poets. 
These  are  trifles,  but  when  he  alters  the  line, 
which  originally  stood,  — 

"  But  when  the  melancholy  fit  shall  come," 

and  for  "come"  substitutes  "fall,"  we  see  at 
once,  besides  the  merit  of  the  soft  alliteration, 
that  he  gives  more  of  the  effect  of  doom  and 
suddenness.  "  Come  "  was  clearly  too  business 
like.  Afterwards,  instead  of  — 

"  Then  feed  thy  sorrow  on  a  morning  rose," 

he  substitutes  for  "feed"  the  inexpressibly  more 
effective  word  "  glut,"  which  gives  at  once  the 
exhaustive  sense  of  wealth  belonging  so  often 
to  Keats's  poetry,  and  seems  to  match  the  full 
ecstasy  of  color  and  shape  and  fragrance  that 
a  morning  rose  may  hold.  Finally,  in  the  line 
which  originally  stood,  — 

"  Or  on  the  rainbow  of  the  dashing  wave," 

he  strikes  out  the  rather  trite  epithet  "dash 
ing,"  and  substitutes  the  stronger  phrase  "  salt- 
sand  wave,"  which  is  peculiar  to  him. 


28  A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT 

All  these  changes  are  happily  accepted  in 
the  common  editions  of  Keats ;  but  these  edi 
tions  make  two  errors  that  are  corrected  by 
this  manuscript,  and  should  henceforth  be 
abandoned.  In  the  line  usually  printed,  — 

"  Nor  let  the  beetle,  nor  the  death-moth  be," 

the  autograph  text  gives  "or"  in  the  place  of 
the  second  "nor,"  a  change  consonant  with  the 
best  usage ;  and  in  the  line,  — 

"  And  hides  the  green  hill  in  an  April  shroud," 

the  middle  word  is  clearly  not  "hill,"  but  "hills." 
This  is  a  distinct  improvement,  both  because  it 
broadens  the  landscape  and  because  it  averts 
the  jangle  of  the  closing  //  with  the  final  words 
"fall"  and  "all"  in  previous  lines. 

It  is  a  fortunate  thing  that,  in  the  uncertain 
destiny  of  all  literary  manuscripts,  this  char 
acteristic  document  should  have  been  preserved 
for  us.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Keats  him 
self  once  wrote  in  a  letter  that  his  fondest 
prayer,  next  to  that  for  the  health  of  his  bro 
ther  Tom,  would  be  that  some  child  of  his 
brother  George  "  should  be  the  first  American 
poet."  This  letter,  printed  by  Milnes,  was 
written  October  29,  1818.  George  Keats  died 
about  1 85 1,  and  his  youngest  daughter,  Isabel, 
who  was  thought  greatly  to  resemble  her  uncle 


A  KEATS  MANUSCRIPT  29 

John,  both  in  looks  and  genius,  died  sadly  at  the 
age  of  seventeen.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  that  we 
have,  through  the  care  exercised  by  this  Amer 
ican  brother,  an  opportunity  of  coming  into 
close  touch  with  the  mental  processes  of  that 
rare  genius  which  first  imparted  something 
like  actual  color  to  English  words.  To  be 
brought  thus  near  to  Keats  suggests  that  poem 
by  Browning  where  he  speaks  of  a  moment's 
interview  with  one  who  had  seen  Shelley,  and 
compares  it  to  picking  up  an  eagle's  feather  on 
a  lonely  heath. 


IV 

MASSASOIT,  INDIAN   CHIEF 


MASSASOIT,    INDIAN    CHIEF 

THERE  was  paid  on  October  19,  1907,  one  of  the  few  tributes  ever 
openly  rendered  by  the  white  races  to  the  higher  type  of  native  In 
dian  leaders.  Such  was  that  given  by  a  large  company  at  Warren, 
Rhode  Island,  to  Massasoit,  the  friendly  Indian  Sachem  who  had 
first  greeted  the  early  Pilgrims,  on  their  arrival  at  Plymouth  in  1620. 
The  leading  address  was  made  by  the  author  of  this  volume. 

The  newspaper  correspondents  tell  us  that, 
when  an  inquiry  was  one  day  made  among 
visitors  returning  from  the  recent  Jamestown 
Exposition,  as  to  the  things  seen  by  each  of 
them  which  he  or  she  would  remember  longest, 
one  man  replied,  "That  life-size  group  in  the 
Smithsonian  building  which  shows  John  Smith 
in  his  old  cock-boat  trading  with  the  Indians. 
He  is  giving  them  beads  or  something  and 
getting  baskets  of  corn  in  exchange."1  This 
seemed  to  the  speaker,  and  quite  reasonably, 
the  very  first  contact  with  civilization  on  the 
part  of  the  American  Indians.  Precisely  parallel 
to  this  is  the  memorial  which  we  meet  to  ded 
icate,  and  which  records  the  first  interview  in 
1620  between  the  little  group  of  Plymouth 
Pilgrims  and  Massasoit,  known  as  the  "great 
est  commander  of  the  country,"  and  "Sachem 

1  Outlook,  October,  1907. 


34  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF 

of  the   whole   region   north   of    Narragansett 

Bay."  ' 

"  Heaven  from  all  creatures  hides  the  book 
of  fate,"  says  the  poet  Pope ;  and  nothing  is 
more  remarkable  in  human  history  than  the 
way  in  which  great  events  sometimes  reach 
their  climax  at  once,  instead  of  gradually  work 
ing  up  to  it.  Never  was  this  better  illustrated 
than  when  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  first  met  the 
one  man  of  this  region  who  could  guarantee 
them  peace  for  fifty  years,  and  did  so.  The  cir 
cumstances  seem  the  simplest  of  the  simple. 

The  first  hasty  glance  between  the  Plymouth 
Puritans  and  the  Indians  did  not  take  place,  as 
you  will  recall,  until  the  newcomers  had  been 
four  days  on  shore,  when,  in  the  words  of  the 
old  chronicler,  "  they  espied  five  or  sixe  people 
with  a  Dogge  coming  towards  them,  who  were 
savages  :  who  when  they  saw  them  ran  into  the 
Woods  and  whistled  the  Dogge  after  them." 
(This  quadruped,  whether  large  or  small,  had 
always  a  capital  letter  in  his  name,  while 
human  savages  had  none,  in  these  early  narra 
tives.)  When  the  English  pursued  the  Indians, 
"  they  ran  away  might  and  main."  2  The  next 
interview  was  a  stormier  one ;  four  days  later, 
those  same  Pilgrims  were  asleep  on  board  the 

1  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States,  i,  247. 

2  E.  W.  Pierce's  Indian  Biography. 


MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF  35 

"shallope"  on  the  morning  of  December  8,  1620 
(now  December  19),  when  they  heard  "a  great 
and  strange  cry,"  and  arrow-shots  came  flying 
amongst  them  which  they  returned  and  one 
Indian  "gave  an  extraordinary  cry"  and  away 
they  went.  After  all  was  quiet,  the  Pilgrims 
picked  up  eighteen  arrows,  some  "headed  with 
brass,  some  with  hart's  horn "  (deer's  horn), 
"  and  others  with  eagles'  claws,"  l  the  brass 
heads  at  least  showing  that  those  Indians  had 
met  Englishmen  before. 

Three  days  after  this  encounter  at  Namske- 
ket, — namely,  on  December  22,  1620  (a  date 
now  computed  as  December  23),  —  the  English 
landed  at  Patuxet,  now  Plymouth.  (I  know  these 
particulars  as  to  dates,  because  I  was  myself 
born  on  the  anniversary  of  this  first  date,  the 
22d,  and  regarded  myself  as  a  sort  of  brevet 
Pilgrim,  until  men,  alleged  to  be  scientific, 
robbed  me  of  one  point  of  eminence  in  my  life 
by  landing  the  Pilgrims  on  the  23d).  Three 
months  passed  before  the  sight  of  any  more 
Indians,  when  Samoset  came,  all  alone,  with  his 
delightful  salutation,  "Welcome,  Englishmen," 
and  a  few  days  later  (March  22, 1621),  the  great 
chief  of  all  that  region,  Massasoit,  appeared  on 
the  scene. 

When  he  first  made   himself  visible,  with 

1  Young's  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims,  1 58. 


36  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF 

sixty  men,  on  that  day,  upon  what  is  still  known 
as  Strawberry  Hill,  he  asked  that  somebody 
be  sent  to  hold  a  parley  with  him.  Edmund 
Winslow  was  appointed  to  this  office,  and 
went  forward  protected  only  by  his  sword  and 
armor,  and  carrying  presents  to  the  Sachem. 
Winslow  also  made  a  speech  of  some  length, 
bringing  messages  (quite  imaginary,  perhaps, 
and  probably  not  at  all  comprehended)  from 
King  James,  whose  representative,  the  gov 
ernor,  wished  particularly  to  see  Massasoit.  It 
appears  from  the  record,  written  apparently  by 
Winslow  himself,  that  Massasoit  made  no  par 
ticular  reply  to  this  harangue,  but  paid  very 
particular  attention  to  Winslow's  sword  and 
armor,  and  proposed  at  once  to  begin  business 
by  buying  them.  This,  however,  was  refused, 
but  Winslow  induced  Massasoit  to  cross  a  brook 
between  the  English  and  himself,  taking  with 
him  twenty  of  his  Indians,  who  were  bidden 
to  leave  their  bows  and  arrows  behind  them. 
Beyond  the  brook,  he  was  met  by  Captain 
Standish,  with  an  escort  of  six  armed  men, 
who  exchanged  salutations  and  attended  him  to 
one  of  the  best,  but  unfinished,  houses  in  the 
village.  Here  a  green  rug  was  spread  on  the 
floor  and  three  or  four  cushions.  The  governor, 
Bradford,  then  entered  the  house,  followed  by 
three  or  four  soldiers  and  preceded  by  a  flourish 


MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF  37 

from  a  drum  and  trumpet,  which  quite  delighted 
and  astonished  the  Indians.  It  was  a  defer 
ence  paid  to  their  Sachem.  He  and  the  gov 
ernor  then  kissed  each  other,  as  it  is  recorded, 
sat  down  together,  and  regaled  themselves  with 
an  entertainment.  The  feast  is  recorded  by  the 
early  narrator  as  consisting  chiefly  of  strong 
waters,  a  "thing  the  savages  love  very  well,"  it 
is  said;  "and  the  Sachem  took  such  a  large 
draught  of  it  at  once  as  made  him  sweat  all  the 
time  he  staied."1 

A  substantial  treaty  of  peace  was  made  on 
this  occasion,  one  immortalized  by  the  fact  that 
it  was  the  first  made  with  the  Indians  of  New 
England.  It  is  the  unquestioned  testimony  of 
history  that  the  negotiation  was  remembered 
and  followed  by  both  sides  for  half  a  century : 
nor  was  Massasoit,  or  any  of  the  Wampano- 
ags  during  his  lifetime,  convicted  of  having 
violated  or  having  attempted  to  violate  any  of 
its  provisions.  This  was  a  great  achievement ! 
Do  you  ask  what  price  bought  all  this  ?  The 
price  practically  paid  for  all  the  vast  domain 
and  power  granted  to  the  white  man  consisted 
of  the  following  items  :  "  a  pair  of  knives  and  a 
copper  chain  with  a  jewel  in  it,  for  the  grand 
Sachem  ;  and  for  his  brother  Quadequina,  a 
knife,  a  jewel  to  hang  in  his  ear,  a  pot  of  strong 

1  Thatcher's  Lives  of  Indians,  i,  119. 


38  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF 

waters,  a  good  quantity  of  biscuit  and  a  piece 
of  butter."  1 

Fair  words,  the  proverb  says,  butter  no  pars 
nips,  but  the  fair  words  of  the  white  men  had 
provided  the  opportunity  for  performing  that 
process.  The  description  preserved  of  the  Indian 
chief  by  an  eye-witness  is  as  follows :  "  In  his 
person  he  is  a  very  lusty  man  in  his  best  years, 
an  able  body,  grave  of  countenance  and  spare  of 
speech  ;  in  his  attire  little  or  nothing  differing 
from  the  rest  of  his  followers,  only  in  a  great 
chain  of  white  bone  beads  about  his  neck  ;  and 
at  it,  behind  his  neck,  hangs  a  little  bag  of 
tobacco,  which  he  drank,  and  gave  us  to  drink 
(this  being  the  phrase  for  that  indulgence  in 
those  days,  as  is  found  in  Ben  Jonson  and  other 
authors).  His  face  was  painted  with  a  sad  red, 
like  murrey  (so  called  from  the  color  of  the 
Moors)  and  oiled,  both  head  and  face,  that  he 
looked  greasily.  All  his  followers  likewise  were 
in  their  faces,  in  part  or  in  whole  painted,  some 
black,  some  red,  some  yellow,  and  some  white, 
some  with  crosses  and  other  antic  works  ;  some 
had  skins  on  them  and  some  naked :  all  strong, 
tall  men  in  appearance."2 

All  this  which  Dr.  Young  tells  us  would  have 
been  a  good  description  of  an  Indian  party  under 

1  Thatcher's  Lives  of  Indians,  i,  120. 

2  Young's  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims,  194. 


MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF  39 

Black  Hawk,  which  was  presented  to  the  Pre 
sident  at  Washington  as  late  as  1837;  and  also, 
I  can  say  the  same  of  such  a  party  seen  by 
myself,  coming  from  a  prairie  in  Kansas,  then 
unexplored,  in  1856. 

The  interchange  of  eatables  was  evidently  at 
that  period  a  pledge  of  good  feeling,  as  it  is 
to-day.  On  a  later  occasion,  Captain  Standish, 
with  Isaac  Alderton,  went  to  visit  the  Indians, 
who  gave  them  three  or  four  groundnuts  and 
some  tobacco.  The  writer  afterwards  says  : 
"  Our  governor  bid  them  send  the  king's  kettle 
and  filled  it  full  of  pease  which  pleased  them 
well,  and  so  they  went  their  way."  It  strikes 
the  modern  reader  as  if  this  were  to  make  pease 
and  peace  practically  equivalent,  and  as  if  the 
parties  needed  only  a  pun  to  make  friends.  It 
is  doubtful  whether  the  arrival  of  a  conquering 
race  was  ever  in  the  history  of  the  world  marked 
by  a  treaty  so  simple  and  therefore  noble. 

"This  treaty  with  Massasoit,"  says  Belknap, 
"was  the  work  of  one  day,"  and  being  honestly 
intended  on  both  sides,  was  kept  with  fidelity 
as  long  as  Massasoit  lived.1  In  September,  1639, 
Massasoit  and  his  oldest  son,  Mooanam,  after 
wards  called  Wamsutta,  came  into  the  court  at 
Plymouth  and  desired  that  this  ancient  league 
should  remain  inviolable,  which  was  accordingly 

1  Belknap's  American  Biography,  ii,  214. 


40  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF 

ratified  and  confirmed  by  the  government,1  and 
lasted  until  it  was  broken  by  Philip,  the  suc 
cessor  of  Wamsutta,  in  1675.  It  is  n°t  my 
affair  to  discuss  the  later  career  of  Philip,  whose 
insurrection  is  now  viewed  more  leniently  than 
in  its  own  day ;  but  the  spirit  of  it  was  surely 
quite  mercilessly  characterized  by  a  Puritan  min 
ister,  Increase  Mather,  who,  when  describing 
a  battle  in  which  old  Indian  men  and  women, 
the  wounded  and  the  helpless,  were  burned 
alive,  said  proudly,  "This  day  we  brought  five 
hundred  Indian  souls  to  hell."2 

But  the  end  of  all  was  approaching.  In  1623, 
Massasoit  sent  a  messenger  to  Plymouth  to  say 
that  he  was  ill,  and  Governor  Bradford  sent  Mr. 
Winslow  to  him  with  medicines  and  cordials. 
When  they  reached  a  certain  ferry,  upon  Wins- 
low's  discharging  his  gun,  Indians  came  to  him 
from  a  house  not  far  off  who  told  him  that 
Massasoit  was  dead  and  that  day  buried.  As 
they  came  nearer,  at  about  half  an  hour  before 
the  setting  of  the  sun,  another  messenger  came 
and  told  them  that  he  was  not  dead,  though 
there  was  no  hope  that  they  would  find  him  liv 
ing.  Hastening  on,  they  arrived  late  at  night. 

"When  we  came  thither,"  Winslow  writes, 
"  we  found  the  house  so  full  of  men  as  we  could 

1  Young's  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims,  194,  note. 

2  E.  W.  Pierce's  Indian  Biography,  22. 


MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF  41 

scarce  get  in,  though  they  used  their  best  dili 
gence  to  make  way  for  us.  There  were  they  in 
the  midst  of  their  charms  for  him,  making  such 
a  hellish  noise  as  it  distempered  us  that  were 
well,  and  therefore  unlike  to  ease  him  that  was 
sick.  About  him  were  six  or  eight  women,  who 
chafed  his  arms,  legs  and  thighs  to  keep  heat 
in  him.  When  they  had  made  an  end  of  their 
charming,  one  told  him  that  his  friends,  the 
English,  were  come  to  see  him.  Having  under 
standing  left,  but  his  sight  was  wholly  gone,  he 
asked  who  was  come.  They  told  him  Winsnow, 
for  they  cannot  pronounce  the  letter  /,  but  or 
dinarily  n  in  place  thereof.  He  desired  to  speak 
with  me.  When  I  came  to  him  and  they  told 
him  of  it,  he  put  forth  his  hand  to  me,  which 
I  took.  When  he  said  twice,  though  very  in 
wardly  : '  Keen  Winsnow  ? '  which  is  to  say  *  Art 
thou  Winslow  ? '  I  answered  :  'Ahhe ' ;  that  is, 
'  Yes.'  Then  he  doubled  these  words :  '  Matta 
neen  wonckanet  nanem,  Winsnow  ! '  That  is  to 
say :  *  Oh,  Winslow,  I  shall  never  see  thee  again ! ' 
Then  I  called  Hobbamock  and  desired  him  to 
tell  Massasowat  that  the  governor,  hearing  of 
his  sickness,  was  sorry  for  the  same  ;  and  though 
by  many  businesses  he  could  not  come  him 
self,  yet  he  sent  me  with  such  things  for  him 
as  he  thought  most  likely  to  do  good  in  this 
extremity ;  and  whereof  if  he  pleased  to  take,  I 


42  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF 

would  presently  give  him ;  which  he  desired, 
and  having  a  confection  of  many  comfortable 
conserves  on  the  point  of  my  knife,  I  gave  him 
some,  which  I  could  scarce  get  through  his 
teeth.  When  it  was  dissolved  in  his  mouth,  he 
swallowed  the  juice  of  it;  whereat  those  that 
were  about  him  much  rejoiced,  saying  that 
he  had  not  swallowed  anything  in  two  days 
before."1 

Then  Winslow  tells  how  he  nursed  the  sick 
chief,  sending  messengers  back  to  the  governor 
for  a  bottle  of  drink,  and  some  chickens  from 
which  to  make  a  broth  for  his  patient.  Mean 
while  he  dissolved  some  of  the  confection  in 
water  and  gave  it  to  Massasoit  to  drink  ;  within 
half  an  hour  the  Indian  improved.  Before  the 
messengers  could  return  with  the  chickens, 
Winslow  made  a  broth  of  meal  and  strawberry- 
leaves  and  sassafras-root,  which  he  strained 
through  his  handkerchief  and  gave  the  chief, 
who  drank  at  least  a  pint  of  it.  After  this  his 
sight  mended  more  and  more,  and  all  rejoiced 
that  the  Englishman  had  been  the  means  of 
preserving  the  life  of  Massasoit.  At  length  the 
messengers  returned  with  the  chickens,  but 
Massasoit,  "  finding  his  stomach  come  to  him, 
.  .  .  would  not  have  the  chickens  killed,  but 
kept  them  for  breed." 

1  E.  W.  Pierce's  Indian  Biography,  25. 


MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF  43 

From  far  and  near  his  followers  carne  to  see 
their  restored  chief,  who  feelingly  said  :  "  Now  I 
see  the  English  are  my  friends  and  love  me ; 
and  whilst  I  live  I  will  never  forget  this  kind 
ness  they  have  showed  me." 

It  would  be  interesting,  were  I  to  take  the 
time,  to  look  into  the  relations  of  Massasoit 
with  others,  especially  with  Roger  Williams  ; 
but  this  has  been  done  by  others,  particularly 
in  the  somewhat  imaginative  chapter  of  my  old 
friend,  Mr.  Butterworth,  and  I  have  already 
said  enough.  Nor  can  I  paint  the  background  of 
that  strange  early  society  of  Rhode  Island,  its 
reaction  from  the  stern  Massachusetts  rigor, 
and  its  quaint  and  varied  materials.  In  that 
new  state,  as  Bancroft  keenly  said,  there  were 
settlements  "filled  with  the  strangest  and 
most  incongruous  elements  ...  so  that  if  a 
man  had  lost  his  religious  opinions,  he  might 
have  been  sure  to  find  them  again  in  some  vil 
lage  in  Rhode  Island." 

Meanwhile  "the  old  benevolent  sachem, 
Massasoit,"  says  Drake's  "  Book  of  the  Indi 
ans,"  "having  died  in  the  winter  of  i66i-2,"so 
died,  a  few  months  after,  his  oldest  son,  Alex 
ander.  Then  came  by  regular  succession,  Philip, 
the  next  brother,  of  whom  the  historian  Hub- 
bard  says  that  for  his  "  ambitious  and  haughty 
spirit  he  was  nicknamed  '  King  Philip.'  "  From 


44  MASSASOIT,  INDIAN  CHIEF 

this  time  followed  warlike  dismay  in  the  colo 
nies,  ending  in  Philip's  piteous  death. 

As  a  long-deferred  memorial  to  Massasoit 
with  all  his  simple  and  modest  virtues,  a  tablet 
has  now  been  reverently  dedicated,  in  the  pre 
sence  of  two  of  the  three  surviving  descendants 
of  the  Indian  chief,  one  of  these  wearing  his 
ancestral  robes.  The  dedication  might  well 
close  as  it  did  with  the  noble  words  of  Young's 
"Night  Thoughts,"  suited  to  such  an  occa 
sion  :  — 

"  Each  man  makes  his  own  stature,  builds  himself : 
Virtue  alone  outbuilds  the  Pyramids ; 
Her  monuments  shall  last  when  Egypt's  fall." 


V 
JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 

"  COOPER,  whose  name  is  with  his  country's  woven 
First  in  her  ranks ;  her  Pioneer  of  mind." 

These  were  the  words  in  which  Fitz-Greene 
Halleck  designated  Cooper's  substantial  prece 
dence  in  American  novel-writing.  Apart  from 
this  mere  priority  in  time, —  he  was  born  at  Bur 
lington,  New  Jersey,  September  15,  1789,  and 
died  at  Cooperstown,  New  York,  September  14, 
1851,  —  he  rendered  the  unique  service  of  inau 
gurating  three  especial  classes  of  fiction, — the 
novel  of  the  American  Revolution,  the  Indian 
novel,  and  the  sea  novel.  In  each  case  he  wrote 
primarily  for  his  own  fellow  countrymen,  and 
achieved  fame  first  at  their  hands  ;  and  in  each 
he  produced  a  class  of  works  which,  in  spite  of 
their  own  faults  and  of  the  somewhat  unconcili- 
atory  spirit  of  their  writer,  have  secured  a  perma 
nence  and  a  breadth  of  range  unequaled  in  Eng 
lish  prose  fiction,  save  by  Scott  alone.  To-day 
the  sale  of  his  works  in  his  own  language  remains 
unabated;  and  one  has  only  to  look  over  the  cat 
alogues  of  European  booksellers  in  order  to 
satisfy  himself  that  this  popularity  continues,  un- 
diminished,  through  the  medium  of  translation. 


48  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 

It  may  be  safely  said  of  him  that  no  author  of 
fiction  in  the  English  language,  except  Scott, 
has  held  his  own  so  well  for  half  a  century  after 
death.  Indeed,  the  list  of  various  editions  and 
versions  of  his  writings  in  the  catalogues  of 
German  booksellers  often  exceeds  that  of  Scott. 
This  is  not  in  the  slightest  degree  due  to  his 
personal  qualities,  for  these  made  him  unpop 
ular,  nor  to  personal  manoeuvring,  for  this  he 
disdained.  He  was  known  to  refuse  to  have  his 
works  even  noticed  in  a  newspaper  for  which 
he  wrote,  the  "  New  York  Patriot."  He  never 
would  have  consented  to  review  his  own  books, 
as  both  Scott  and  Irving  did,  or  to  write  direct 
or  indirect  puffs  of  himself,  as  was  done  by 
Poe  and  Whitman.  He  was  foolishly  sensitive 
to  criticism,  and  unable  to  conceal  it ;  he  was 
easily  provoked  to  a  quarrel ;  he  was  dissatisfied 
with  either  praise  or  blame,  and  speaks  evidently 
of  himself  in  the  words  of  the  hero  of  "  Miles 
Wallingford,"  when  he  says  :  "  In  scarce  a  cir 
cumstance  of  my  life  that  has  brought  me  in  the 
least  under  the  cognizance  of  the  public  have  I 
ever  been  judged  justly."  There  is  no  doubt 
that  he  himself — or  rather  the  temperament 
given  him  by  nature — was  to  blame  for  this, 
but  the  fact  is  unquestionable. 

Add  to  this  that  he  was,  in  his  way  and  in  what 
was  unfortunately  the  most  obnoxious  way,  a 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER  49 

reformer.  That  is,  he  was  what  may  be  called 
a  reformer  in  the  conservative  direction, — he 
belabored  his  fellow  citizens  for  changing  many 
English  ways  and  usages,  and  he  wished  them 
to  change  these  things  back  again,  immediately. 
In  all  this  he  was  absolutely  unselfish,  but  ut 
terly  tactless ;  and  inasmuch  as  the  point  of 
view  he  took  was  one  requiring  the  very  great 
est  tact,  the  defect  was  hopeless.  As  a  rule,  no 
man  criticises  American  ways  so  unsuccess 
fully  as  an  American  who  has  lived  many  years 
in  Europe.  The  mere  European  critic  is  igno 
rant  of  our  ways  and  frankly  owns  it,  even  if 
thinking  the  fact  but  a  small  disqualification ; 
while  the  American  absentee,  having  remained 
away  long  enough  to  have  forgotten  many  things 
and  never  to  have  seen  many  others,  may  have 
dropped  hopelessly  behindhand  as  to  the  facts, 
yet  claims  to  speak  with  authority.  Cooper 
went  even  beyond  these  professional  absentees, 
because,  while  they  are  usually  ready  to  praise 
other  countries  at  the  expense  of  America, 
Cooper,  with  heroic  impartiality,  dispraised  all 
countries,  or  at  least  all  that  spoke  English.  A 
thoroughly  patriotic  and  high-minded  man,  he 
yet  had  no  mental  perspective,  and  made  small 
matters  as  important  as  great.  Constantly  re 
proaching  America  for  not  being  Europe,  he 
also  satirized  Europe  for  being  what  it  was. 


So  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 

As  a  result,  he  was  for  a  time  equally  detested 
by  the  press  of  both  countries.  The  English, 
he  thought,  had  "a  national  propensity  to  black 
guardism,"  and  certainly  the  remarks  he  drew 
from  them  did  something  to  vindicate  the  charge. 
When  the  London  "Times"  called  him  "af 
fected,  offensive,  curious,  and  ill-conditioned," 
and  "Fraser's  Magazine,"  "a  liar,  a  bilious 
braggart,  a  full  jackass,  an  insect,  a  grub,  and 
a  reptile,"  they  clearly  left  little  for  America 
to  say  in  that  direction.  Yet  Park  Benjamin 
did  his  best,  or  his  worst,  when  he  called  Cooper 
(in  Greeley's  "New  Yorker")  "a  superlative 
dolt  and  the  common  mark  of  scorn  and  con 
tempt  of  every  well-informed  American  "  ;  and 
so  did  Webb,  when  he  pronounced  the  novelist 
"a  base-minded  caitiff  who  had  traduced  his 
country."  Not  being  able  to  reach  his  English 
opponents,  Cooper  turned  on  these  Americans, 
and  spent  years  in  attacking  Webb  and  others 
through  the  courts,  gaining  little  and  losing 
much  through  the  long  vicissitudes  of  petty 
local  lawsuits.  The  fact  has  kept  alive  their 
memory ;  but  for  Lowell's  keener  shaft,  "  Cooper 
has  written  six  volumes  to  show  he 's  as  good 
as  a  lord,"  there  was  no  redress.  The  arrow 
lodged  and  split  the  target. 

Like  Scott  and  most  other  novelists,  Cooper 
was  rarely  successful  with  his  main  characters, 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER  51 

but  was  saved  by  his  subordinate  ones.  These 
were  strong,  fresh,  characteristic,  human ;  and 
they  lay,  as  I  have  already  said,  in  several  differ 
ent  directions,  all  equally  marked.  If  he  did  not 
create  permanent  types  in  Harvey  Birch  the 
spy,  Leather-Stocking  the  woodsman,  Long 
Tom  Coffin  the  sailor,  Chingachgook  the  Indian, 
then  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  creation  of 
characters  in  literature.  Scott  was  far  more  pro 
fuse  and  varied,  but  he  gave  no  more  of  life  to 
individual  personages,  and  perhaps  created  no 
types  so  universally  recognized.  What  is  most 
remarkable  is  that,  in  the  case  of  the  Indian  espe 
cially,  Cooper  was  not  only  in  advance  of  the 
knowledge  of  his  own  time,  but  of  that  of  the 
authors  who  .immediately  followed  him.  In  Park- 
man  and  Palfrey,  for  instance,  the  Indian  of 
Cooper  vanishes  and  seems  wholly  extinguished  ; 
but  under  the  closer  inspection  of  Alice  Fletcher 
and  Horatio  Hale,  the  lost  figure  reappears,  and 
becomes  more  picturesque,  more  poetic,  more 
thoughtful,  than  even  Cooper  dared  to  make 
him.  The  instinct  of  the  novelist  turned  out 
more  authoritative  than  the  premature  conclu 
sions  of  a  generation  of  historians. 

It  is  only  women  who  can  draw  the  common 
place,  at  least  in  English,  and  make  it  fascinat 
ing.  Perhaps  only  two  English  women  have 
done  this,  Jane  Austen  and  George  Eliot ;  while 


52  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 

in  France -George  Sand  has  certainly  done  it 
far  less  well  than  it  has  been  achieved  by  Balzac 
and  Daudet.  Cooper  never  succeeded  in  it  for 
a  single  instant,  and  even  when  he  has  an  ad 
miral  of  this  type  to  write  about,  he  puts  into 
him  less  of  life  than  Marryat  imparts  to  the 
most  ordinary  midshipman.  The  talk  of  Cooper's 
civilian  worthies  is,  as  Professor  Lounsbury  has 
well  said,  —  in  what  is  perhaps  the  best  bio 
graphy  yet  written  of  any  American  author,  — 
"of  a  kind  not  known  to  human  society."  This 
is  doubtless  aggravated  by  the  frequent  use  of 
thee  and  thou,  yet  this,  which  Professor  Louns 
bury  attributes  to  Cooper's  Quaker  ancestry, 
was  in  truth  a  part  of  the  formality  of  the  old 
period,  and  is  found  also  in  Brockden  Brown. 
And  as  his  writings  conform  to  their  period  in 
this,  so  they  did  in  other  respects  :  describing 
every  woman,  for  instance,  as  a  "  female,"  and 
making  her  to  be  such  as  Cooper  himself  de 
scribes  the  heroine  of  "Mercedes  of  Castile" 
to  be  when  he  says,  "  Her  very  nature  is  made 
up  of  religion  and  female  decorum."  Scott  him 
self  could  also  draw  such  inane  figures,  yet  in 
Jeanie  Deans  he  makes  an  average  Scotch 
woman  heroic,  and  in  Meg  Merrilies  and  Madge 
Wildfire  he  paints  the  extreme  of  daring  self- 
will.  There  is  scarcely  a  novel  of  Scott's  where 
some  woman  does  not  show  qualities  which 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER  53 

approach  the  heroic;  while  Cooper  scarcely 
produced  one  where  a  woman  rises  even  to  the 
level  of  an  interesting  commonplaceness.  She 
may  be  threatened,  endangered,  tormented,  be 
sieged  in  forts,  captured  by  Indians,  but  the 
same  monotony  prevails.  So  far  as  the  real  in 
terest  of  Cooper's  story  goes,  it  might  usually 
be  destitute  of  a  single  "female,"  that  sex 
appearing  chiefly  as  a  bundle  of  dry  goods  to 
be  transported,  or  as  a  fainting  appendage  to 
the  skirmish.  The  author  might  as  well  have 
written  the  romance  of  an  express  parcel. 

His  long  introductions  he  shared  with  the 
other  novelists  of  the  day,  or  at  least  with  Scott, 
for  both  Miss  Austen  and  Miss  Edgeworth  are 
more  modern  in  this  respect  and  strike  more 
promptly  into  the  tale.  His  loose-jointed  plots 
are  also  shared  with  Scott,  but  Cooper  knows  as 
surely  as  his  rival  how  to  hold  the  reader's  atten 
tion  when  once  grasped.  Like  Scott's,  too,  is 
his  fearlessness  in  giving  details,  instead  of  the 
vague  generalizations  which  were  then  in  fash 
ion,  and  to  which  his  academical  critics  would 
have  confined  him.  He  is  indeed  already  vindi 
cated  in  some  respects  by  the  advance  of  the  art 
he  pursued ;  where  he  led  the  way,  the  best 
literary  practice  has  followed.  The  "  Edinburgh 
Review"  exhausted  its  heavy  artillery  upon  him 
for  his  accurate  descriptions  of  costume  and 


54  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 

localities,  and  declared  that  they  were  "an  epi 
lepsy  of  the  fancy,"  and  that  a  vague  general 
account  would  have  been  far  better.  "Why 
describe  the  dress  and  appearance  of  an  Indian 
chief,  down  to  his  tobacco-stopper  and  button 
holes  ? "  We  now  see  that  it  is  this  very  habit 
which  has  made  Cooper's  Indian  a  permanent 
figure  in  literature,  while  the  Indians  of  his  pre 
decessor,  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  were  merely 
dusky  spectres.  "Poetry  or  romance,"  continued 
the  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  "  does  not  descend 
into  the  particulars,"  this  being  the  same  fallacy 
satirized  by  Ruskin,  whose  imaginary  painter 
produced  a  quadruped  which  was  a  generali 
zation  between  a  pony  and  a  pig.  Balzac,  who 
risked  the  details  of  buttons  and  tobacco  pipes 
as  fearlessly  as  Cooper,  said  of  "  The  Path 
finder,"  "Never  did  the  art  of  writing  tread 
closer  upon  the  art  of  the  pencil.  This  is  the 
school  of  study  for  literary  landscape  painters." 
He  says  elsewhere  :  "  If  Cooper  had  succeeded 
in  the  painting  of  character  to  the  same  extent 
that  he  did  in  the  painting  of  the  phenomena 
of  nature,  he  would  have  uttered  the  last  word 
of  our  art."  Upon  such  praise  as  this  the  rep 
utation  of  James  Fenimore  Cooper  may  well 
rest. 


VI 

CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 

WHEN,  in  1834,  the  historian  Jared  Sparks 
undertook  the  publication  of  a  "Library  of 
American  Biography,"  he  included  in  the  very 
first  volume — with  a  literary  instinct  most 
creditable  to  one  so  absorbed  in  the  severer 
paths  of  history  —  a  memoir  of  Charles  Brock- 
den  Brown  by  W.  H.  Prescott.  It  was  an  ap 
propriate  tribute  to  the  first  imaginative  writer 
worth  mentioning  in  America,  —  he  having  been 
born  in  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania,  on  Janu 
ary  17,  1771,  and  died  there  of  consumption 
on  February  22,  1810, — and  to  one  who  was 
our  first  professional  author.  He  was  also  the 
first  to  exert  a  positive  influence,  across  the 
Atlantic,  upon  British  literature,  laying  thus 
early  a  few  modest  strands  towards  an  ocean- 
cable  of  thought.  As  a  result  of  this  influence, 
concealed  doors  opened  in  lonely  houses,  fatal 
epidemics  laid  cities  desolate,  secret  plots  were 
organized,  unknown  persons  from  foreign  lands 
died  in  garrets,  usually  :leaving  large  sums  of 
money  ;  the  honor  of  innocent  women  was  con 
stantly  endangered,  though  usually  saved  in 
time;  people  were  subject  to  somnambulism  and 


58     CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 

general  frenzy;  vast  conspiracies  were  organized 
with  small  aims  and  smaller  results.  His  books, 
published  between  1798  and  1801,  made  their 
way  across  the  ocean  with  a  promptness  that 
now  seems  inexplicable ;  and  Mrs.  Shelley,  in  her 
novel  of  "The  Last  Man,"  founds  her  whole 
description  of  an  epidemic  which  nearly  de 
stroyed  the  human  race,  on  "the  masterly  de 
lineations  of  the  author  of  *  Arthur  Mervyn.'  " 
Shelley  himself  recognized  his  obligations  to 
Brown  ;  and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  Brown 
himself  was  evidently  familiar  with  Godwin's 
philosophical  writings,  and  that  he  may  have 
drawn  from  those  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft  his 
advanced  views  as  to  the  rights  and  education 
of  women,  a  subject  on  which  his  first  book, 
"  Alcuin,"  offered  the  earliest  American  pro 
test.  Undoubtedly  his  books  furnished  a  point 
of  transition  from  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  of  whom  he 
disapproved,  to  the  modern  novel  of  realism,  al 
though  his  immediate  influence  and,  so  to  speak, 
his  stage  properties,  can  hardly  be  traced  later 
than  the  remarkable  tale,  also  by  a  Philadelphian, 
called  "  Stanley  ;  or  the  Man  of  the  World,"  first 
published  in  1839  in  London,  though  the  scene 
was  laid  in  America.  This  book  was  attributed, 
from  its  profuse  literary  quotations,  to  Edward 
Everett,  but  was  soon  understood  to  be  the  work 
of  a  very  young  man  of  twenty-one,  Horace 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN     59 

Binney  Wallace.  In  this  book  the  influence  of 
Bulwer  and  Disraeli  is  palpable,  but  Brown's  con 
cealed  chambers  and  aimless  conspiracies  and 
sudden  mysterious  deaths  also  reappear  in  full 
force,  not  without  some  lingering  power,  and 
then  vanish  from  American  literature  forever. 
Brown's  style,  and  especially  the  language  put 
by  him  into  the  mouths  of  his  characters,  is  per 
haps  unduly  characterized  by  Professor  Wood- 
berry  as  being  "something  never  heard  off  the 
stage  of  melodrama,"  What  this  able  critic  does 
not  sufficiently  recognize  is  that  the  general 
style  of  the  period  at  which  they  were  written 
was  itself  melodramatic;  and  that  to  substitute 
what  we  should  call  simplicity  would  then  have 
made  the  picture  unfaithful.  One  has  only  to 
read  over  the  private  letters  of  any  educated 
family  of  that  period  to  see  that  people  did  not 
then  express  themselves  as  they  now  do;  that 
they  were  far  more  ornate  in  utterance,  more 
involved  in  statement,  more  impassioned  in 
speech.  Even  a  comparatively  terse  writer  like 
Prescott,  in  composing  Brown's  biography  only 
sixty  years  ago,  shows  traces  of  the  earlier 
period.  Instead  of  stating  simply  that  his  hero 
was  a  born  Quaker,  he  says  of  him  :  "  He  was 
descended  from  a  highly  respectable  family, 
whose  parents  were  of  that  estimable  sect  who 
came  over  with  William  Penn,  to  seek  an  asy- 


60  CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 

lum  where  they  might  worship  their  Creator 
unmolested,  in  the  meek  and  humble  spirit  of 
their  own  faith."  Prescott  justly  criticises  Brown 
for  saying,  "  I  was  fraught  with  the  apprehen 
sion  that  my  life  was  endangered  " ;  or  "  his 
brain  seemed  to  swell  beyond  \\s  continent"  \ 
or  "  I  drew  every  bolt  that  appended  to  it  "  ;  or 
"on  recovering  from  deliquium,  you  found  it 
where  it  had  been  dropped  "  ;  or  for  resorting  to 
the  circumlocution  of  saying,  "  by  a  common 
apparatus  that  lay  beside  my  head  I  could  pro 
duce  a  light,"  when  he  really  meant  that  he  had 
a  tinder-box.  The  criticism  on  Brown  is  fair 
enough,  yet  Prescott  himself  presently  takes  us 
halfway  back  to  the  florid  vocabulary  of  that 
period,  when,  instead  of  merely  saying  that  his 
hero  was  fond  of  reading,  he  tells  us  that  "  from 
his  earliest  childhood  Brown  gave  evidence  of 
studious  propensities,  being  frequently  noticed 
by  his  father  on  his  return  from  school  por 
ing  over  some  heavy  tome."  If  the  tome  in 
question  was  Johnson's  dictionary,  as  it  may 
have  been,  it  would  explain  both  Brown's  style 
of  writing  and  the  milder  amplifications  of  his 
biographer.  Nothing  is  more  difficult  to  tell,  in 
the  fictitious  literature  of  even  a  generation  or 
two  ago,  where  a  faithful  delineation  ends  and 
where  caricature  begins.  The  four-story  signa 
tures  of  Micawber's  letters,  as  represented  by 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN     61 

Dickens,  go  but  little  beyond  the  similar  cour 
tesies  employed  in  a  gentlewoman's  letters  in 
the  days  of  Anna  Seward.  All  we  can  say  is 
that  within  a  century,  for  some  cause  or  other, 
English  speech  has  grown  very  much  simpler, 
and  human  happiness  has  increased  in  propor 
tion. 

In  the  preface  to  his  second  novel,  "Edgar 
Huntley,"  Brown  announces  it  as  his  primary 
purpose  to  be  American  in  theme,  "  to  exhibit 
a  series  of  adventures  growing  out  of  our  own 
country,"  adding,  "  That  the  field  of  investiga 
tion  opened  to  us  by  our  own  country  should 
differ  essentially  from  those  which  exist  in  Eu 
rope  may  be  readily  conceived."  He  protests 
against  "  puerile  superstition  and  exploded  man 
ners,  Gothic  castles  and  chimeras,"  and  adds: 
"The  incidents  of  Indian  hostility  and  the 
perils  of  the  western  wilderness  are  far  more 
suitable."  All  this  is  admirable,  but  unfortu 
nately  the  inherited  thoughts  and  methods  of 
the  period  hung  round  him  to  cloy  his  style, 
even  after  his  aim  was  emancipated.  It  is  to  be 
remembered  that  almost  all  his  imaginative 
work  was  done  in  early  life,  before  the  age  of 
thirty,  and  before  his  powers  became  mature. 
Yet  with  all  his  drawbacks  he  had  achieved  his 
end,  and  had  laid  the  foundation  for  American 
fiction. 


62     CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 

With  all  his  inflation  of  style,  he  was  un 
doubtedly,  in  his  way,  a  careful  observer.  The 
proof  of  this  is  that  he  has  preserved  for  us 
many  minor  points  of  life  and  manners  which 
make  the  Philadelphia  of  a  century  ago  now 
more  familiar  to  us  than  is  any  other  American 
city  of  that  period.  He  gives  us  the  roving  In 
dian;  the  newly  arrived  French  musician  with 
violin  and  monkey ;  the  one-story  farmhouses, 
where  boarders  are  entertained  at  a  dollar  a 
week;  the  gray  cougar  amid  caves  of  lime 
stone.  We  learn  from  him  "the  dangers  and 
toils  of  a  midnight  journey  in  a  stage  coach  in 
America.  The  roads  are  knee  deep  in  mire, 
winding  through  crags  and  pits,  while  the 
wheels  groan  and  totter  and  the  curtain  and 
roof  admit  the  wet  at  a  thousand  seams."  We 
learn  the  proper  costume  for  a  youth  of  good 
fortune  and  family,  —  "nankeen  coat  striped 
with  green,  a  white  silk  waistcoat  elegantly 
needle-wrought,  cassimere  pantaloons,  stock 
ings  of  variegated  silk,  and  shoes  that  in  their 
softness  vie  with  satin."  When  dressing  him 
self,  this  favored  youth  ties  his  flowing  locks 
with  a  black  ribbon.  We  find  from  him  that 
"stage  boats"  then  crossed  twice  a  day  from 
New  York  to  Staten  Island,  and  we  discover 
also  with  some  surprise  that  negroes  were  freely 
admitted  to  ride  in  stages  in  Pennsylvania, 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN     63 

although  they  were  liable,  half  a  century  later, 
to  be  ejected  from  street-cars.  We  learn  also 
that  there  were  negro  free  schools  in  Phila 
delphia.  All  this  was  before  1801. 

It  has  been  common  to  say  that  Brown  had 
no  literary  skill,  but  it  would  be  truer  to  say 
that  he  had  no  sense  of  literary  construction. 
So  far  as  skill  is  tested  by  the  power  to  pique 
curiosity,  Brown  had  it ;  his  chapters  almost 
always  end  at  a  point  of  especial  interest,  and 
the  next  chapter,  postponing  the  solution,  often 
diverts  the  interest  in  a  wholly  new  direction. 
But  literary  structure  there  is  none  :  the  plots 
are  always  cumulative  and  even  oppressive ; 
narrative  is  inclosed  in  narrative  ;  new  charac 
ters  and  complications  come  and  go,  while  im 
portant  personages  disappear  altogether,  and 
are  perhaps  fished  up  with  difficulty,  as  with 
a  hook  and  line,  on  the  very  last  page.  There  is 
also  a  total  lack  of  humor,  and  only  such  efforts 
at  vivacity  as  this :  "  Move  on,  my  quill !  wait 
not  for  my  guidance.  Reanimated  with  thy 
master's  spirit,  all  airy  light.  A  heyday  rap 
ture  !  A  mounting  impulse  sways  him ;  lifts 
him  from  the  earth."  There  is  so  much  of 
monotony  in  the  general  method,  that  one  novel 
seems  to  stand  for  all ;  and  the  same  modes  of 
solution  reappear  so  often,  —  somnambulism, 


64     CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 

ventriloquism,  yellow  fever,  forged  letters,  con 
cealed  money,  secret  closets,  — that  it  not  only 
gives  a  sense  of  puerility,  but  makes  it  very 
difficult  to  recall,  as  to  any  particular  passage, 
from  which  book  it  came. 


VII 
HENRY   DAVID   THOREAU 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU 

THERE  has  been  in  America  no  such  instance 
of  posthumous  reputation  as  in  the  case  of 
Thoreau.  Poe  and  Whitman  may  be  claimed  as 
parallels,  but  not  justly.  Poe,  even  during  his 
life,  rode  often  on  the  very  wave  of  success, 
until  it  subsided  presently  beneath  him,  always 
to  rise  again,  had  he  but  made  it  possible. 
Whitman  gathered  almost  immediately  a  small 
but  stanch  band  of  followers,  who  have  held  by 
him  with  such  vehemence  and  such  flagrant 
imitation  as  to  keep  his  name  defiantly  in  evi 
dence,  while  perhaps  enhancing  the  antagonism 
of  his  critics.  Thoreau  could  be  egotistical 
enough,  but  was  always  high-minded ;  all  was 
open  and  aboveboard;  one  could  as  soon  con 
ceive  of  self-advertising  by  a  deer  in  the  woods 
or  an  otter  of  the  brook.  He  had  no  organized 
clique  of  admirers,  nor  did  he  possess  even 
what  is  called  personal  charm,  —  or  at  least  only 
that  piquant  attraction  which  he  himself  found 
in  wild  apples.  As  a  rule,  he  kept  men  at  a  dis 
tance,  being  busy  with  his  own  affairs.  He  left 
neither  wife  nor  children  to  attend  to  his  mem 
ory  ;  and  his  sister  seemed  for  a  time  to  repress 


68  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

the  publication  of  his  manuscripts.  Yet  this 
plain,  shy,  retired  student,  who  when  thirty- 
two  years  old  carried  the  unsold  edition  of  his 
first  book  upon  his  back  to  his  attic  chamber; 
who  died  at  forty-four  still  unknown  to  the 
general  public  ;  this  child  of  obscurity,  who 
printed  but  two  volumes  during  his  lifetime, 
has  had  ten  volumes  of  his  writings  published 
by  others  since  his  death,  while  four  biographies 
of  him  have  been  issued  in  America  (by  Emer 
son,  Channing,  Sanborn,  and  Jones),  besides 
two  in  England  (by  Page  and  Salt). 

Thoreau  was  born  in  Boston  on  July  12,  1817, 
but  spent  most  of  his  life  in  Concord,  Massa 
chusetts,  where  he  taught  school  and  was  for 
three  years  an  inmate  of  the  family  of  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  practicing  at  various  times  the 
art  of  pencil-making  —  his  father's  occupation 
—  and  also  of  surveying,  carpentering,  and 
housekeeping.  So  identified  was  he  with  the 
place  that  Emerson  speaks  of  it  in  one  case  as 
Thoreau's  "native  town."  Yet  from  that  very 
familiarity,  perhaps,  the  latter  was  underesti 
mated  by  many  of  his  neighbors,  as  was  the 
case  in  Edinburgh  with  Sir  Walter  Scott,  as 
Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan  describes. 

When  I  was  endeavoring,  about  1870,  to  per 
suade  Thoreau's  sister  to  let  some  one  edit  his 
journals,  I  invoked  the  aid  of  Judge  Hoar,  then 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  69 

lord  of  the  manor  in  Concord,  who  heard  me  pa 
tiently  through,  and  then  said:  "Whereunto? 
You  have  not  established  the  preliminary  point. 
Why  should  any  one  wish  to  have  Thoreau's 
journals  printed  ? "  Ten  years  later,  four  suc 
cessive  volumes  were  made  out  of  these  journals 
by  the  late  H.  G.  O.  Blake,  and  it  became  a 
question  if  the  whole  might  not  be  published. 
I  hear  from  a  local  photograph  dealer  in  Con 
cord  that  the  demand  for  Thoreau's  pictures 
now  exceeds  that  for  any  other  local  celebrity. 
In  the  last  sale  catalogue  of  autographs  which 
I  have  encountered,  I  find  a  letter  from  Thoreau 
priced  at  $17.50,  one  from  Hawthorne  valued 
at  the  same,  one  from  Longfellow  at  $4. 50  only, 
and  one  from  Holmes  at  $3,  each  of  these  being 
guaranteed  as  an  especially  good  autograph  let 
ter.  Now  the  value  of  such  memorials  during 
a  man's  life  affords  but  a  slight  test  of  his  per 
manent  standing,  —  since  almost  any  man's 
autograph  can  be  obtained  for  two  postage- 
stamps  if  the  request  be  put  with  sufficient  in 
genuity ; — but  when  this  financial  standard  can 
be  safely  applied  more  than  thirty  years  after 
a  man's  death,  it  comes  pretty  near  to  a  per 
manent  fame. 

It  is  true  that  Thoreau  had  Emerson  as  the 
editor  of  four  of  his  posthumous  volumes  ;  but 
it  is  also  true  that  he  had  against  him  the  vehe- 


70  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

ment  voice  of  Lowell,  whose  influence  as  a  critic 
was  at  that  time  greater  than  Emerson's.  It  will 
always  remain  a  puzzle  why  it  was  that  Lowell, 
who  had  reviewed  Thoreau's  first  book  with  cor 
diality  in  the  "Massachusetts  Quarterly  Review," 
and  had  said  to  me  afterwards,  on  hearing  him 
compared  to  Izaak  Walton,  "  There  is  room  for 
three  or  four  Waltons  in  Thoreau,"  should  have 
written  the  really  harsh  attack  on  the  latter 
which  afterwards  appeared,  and  in  which  the 
plain  facts  were  unquestionably  perverted.  To 
transform  Thoreau's  two  brief  years  of  study 
and  observation  at  Walden,  within  two  miles  of 
his  mother's  door,  into  a  life-long  renunciation 
of  his  fellow  men  ;  to  complain  of  him  as  waiv 
ing  all  interest  in  public  affairs  when  the  great 
crisis  of  John  Brown's  execution  had  found  him 
far  more  awake  to  it  than  Lowell  was,  —  this 
was  only  explainable  by  the  lingering  tradition 
of  that  savage  period  of  criticism,  initiated  by 
Poe,  in  whose  hands  the  thing  became  a  toma 
hawk.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  tomahawk  had 
in  this  case  its  immediate  effect ;  and  the  Eng 
lish  editor  and  biographer  of  Thoreau  has  stated 
that  Lowell's  criticism  is  to  this  day  the  great 
obstacle  to  the  acceptance  of  Thoreau's  writ 
ings  in  England.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  how 
ever,  that  Thoreau  was  not  wholly  of  English 
but  partly  of  French  origin,  and  was,  it  might 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  71 

be  added,  of  a  sort  of  moral-Oriental,  or  Puri 
tan  Pagan  temperament.  With  a  literary  feeling 
even  stronger  than  his  feeling  for  nature,  —  the 
proof  of  this  being  that  he  could  not,  like  many 
men,  enjoy  nature  in  silence,  — he  put  his  ob 
servations  always  on  the  level  of  literature, 
while  Mr.  Burroughs,  for  instance,  remains 
more  upon  the  level  of  journalism.  It  is  to  be 
doubted  whether  any  author  under  such  circum 
stances  would  have  been  received  favorably 
in  England ;  just  as  the  poems  of  Emily  Dick 
inson,  which  have  shafts  of  profound  scrutiny 
that  often  suggest  Thoreau,  had  an  extraordinary 
success  at  home,  but  fell  hopelessly  dead  in 
England,  so  that  the  second  volume  was  never 
even  published. 

Lowell  speaks  of  Thoreau  as  " indolent"; 
but  this  is,  as  has  been  said,  like  speaking  of 
the  indolence  of  a  self-registering  thermometer. 
Lowell  objects  to  him  as  pursuing  "a  seclusion 
that  keeps  him  in  the  public  eye  "  ;  whereas  it 
was  the  public  eye  which  sought  him  ;  it  was 
almost  as  hard  to  persuade  him  to  lecture  (crede 
expertd]  as  it  was  to  get  an  audience  for  him 
when  he  had  consented.  He  never  proclaimed 
the  intrinsic  superiority  of  the  wilderness,  as 
has  been  charged,  but  pointed  out  better  than 
any  one  else  has  done  its  undesirableness  as  a 
residence,  ranking  it  only  as  "a  resource  and 


72  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

a  background."  "The  partially  cultivated  coun 
try  it  is,"  he  says,  "  which  has  chiefly  inspired, 
and  will  continue  to  inspire,  the  strains  of  poets 
such  as  compose  the  mass  of  any  literature." 
"What  is  nature,"  he  elsewhere  says,  "unless 
there  is  a  human  life  passing  within  it  ?  Many 
joys  and  many  sorrows  are  the  lights  and  shad 
ows  in  which  she  shines  most  beautiful."  This 
is  the  real  and  human  Thoreau,  who  often 
whimsically  veiled  himself,  but  was  plainly 
enough  seen  by  any  careful  observer.  That  he 
was  abrupt  and  repressive  to  bores  and  pedants, 
that  he  grudged  his  time  to  them  and  frequently 
withdrew  himself,  was  as  true  of  him  as  of 
Wordsworth  or  Tennyson.  If  they  were  allowed 
their  privacy,  though  in  the  heart  of  England, 
an  American  who  never  left  his  own  broad  con 
tinent  might  at  least  be  allowed  his  privilege 
of  stepping  out  of  doors.  The  Concord  school 
children  never  quarreled  with  this  habit,  for 
he  took  them  out  of  doors  with  him  and  taught 
them  where  the  best  whortleberries  grew. 

His  scholarship,  like  his  observation  of  na 
ture,  was  secondary  to  his  function  as  poet 
and  writer.  Into  both  he  carried  the  element 
of  whim  ;  but  his  version  of  the  "  Prometheus 
Bound  "  shows  accuracy,  and  his  study  of  birds 
and  plants  shows  care.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  he  antedated  the  modern  school,  classed 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  73 

plants  by  the  Linnaean  system,  and  had  neces 
sarily  Nuttall  for  his  elementary  manual  of 
birds.  Like  all  observers,  he  left  whole  realms 
uncultivated ;  thus  he  puzzles  in  his  journal 
over  the  great  brown  paper  cocoon  of  the  Atta- 
cus  Cecropia,  which  every  village  boy  brings 
home  from  the  winter  meadows.  If  he  has  not 
the  specialized  habit  of  the  naturalist  of  to-day, 
neither  has  he  the  polemic  habit ;  firm  beyond 
yielding,  as  to  the  local  facts  of  his  own  Con 
cord,  he  never  quarrels  with  those  who  have 
made  other  observations  elsewhere ;  he  is  in 
volved  in  none  of  those  contests  in  which  palae 
ontologists,  biologists,  astronomers,  have  wasted 
so  much  of  their  lives. 

His  especial  greatness  is  that  he  gives  us 
standing-ground  below  the  surface,  a  basis  not 
to  be  washed  away.  A  hundred  sentences  might 
be  quoted  from  him  which  make  common  ob 
servers  seem  superficial  and  professed  philoso 
phers  trivial,  but  which,  if  accepted,  place  the 
realities  of  life  beyond  the  reach  of  danger. 
He  was  a  spiritual  ascetic,  to  whom  the  simpli 
city  of  nature  was  luxury  enough ;  and  this,  in 
an  age  of  growing  expenditure,  gave  him  an 
unspeakable  value.  To  him,  life  itself  was  a 
source  of  joy  so  great  that  it  was  only  weakened 
by  diluting  it  with  meaner  joys.  This  was  the 
standard  to  which  he  constantly  held  his  con- 


74  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

temporaries.  "There  is  nowhere  recorded,"  he 
complains,  "a  simple  and  irrepressible  satisfac 
tion  with  the  gift  of  life,  any  memorable  praise 
of  God.  .  .  .  If  the  day  and  the  night  are  such 
that  you  greet  them  with  joy,  and  life  emits  a 
fragrance,  like  flowers  and  sweet-scented  herbs, 
—  is  more  elastic,  starry,  and  immortal, — that 
is  your  success."  This  was  Thoreau,  who  died 
unmarried  at  Concord,  Massachusetts,  May  6, 
1862. 


VIII 

EMERSON'S   "FOOT-NOTE 
PERSON,"  — ALCOTT 


EMERSON'S   "FOOT-NOTE 
PERSON,"  — ALCOTT 

THE  phrase  "foot-note  person  "  was  first  in 
troduced  into  our  literature  by  one  of  the  most 
acute  and  original  of  the  anonymous  writers  in 
the  "Atlantic  Monthly"  (July,  1906),  one  by 
whose  consent  I  am  permitted  to  borrow  it 
for  my  present  purpose.  Its  originator  himself 
suggests,  as  an  illustration  of  what  he  means, 
the  close  relation  which  existed  through  life 
between  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and  his  less 
famous  Concord  neighbor,  Amos  Bronson  Al- 
cott.  The  latter  was  doubtless  regarded  by 
the  world  at  large  as  a  mere  "  foot-note  "  to  his 
famous  friend,  while  he  yet  was  doubtless  the 
only  literary  contemporary  to  whom  Emerson 
invariably  and  candidly  deferred,  regarding  him, 
indeed,  as  unequivocally  the  leading  philoso 
phic  or  inspirational  mind  of  his  day.  Let  this 
"foot-note,"  then,  be  employed  as  the  text  for 
frank  discussion  of  what  was,  perhaps,  the  most 
unique  and  picturesque  personality  developed 
during  the  Transcendental  period  of  our  Amer 
ican  literature.  Let  us  consider  the  career  of  one 
who  was  born  with  as  little  that  seemed  advan- 


78      EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

tageous  in  his  surroundings  as  was  the  case 
with  Abraham  Lincoln,  or  John  Brown  of  Ossa- 
watomie,  and  who  yet  developed  in  the  end  an 
individuality  as  marked  as  that  of  Poe  or  Walt 
Whitman. 

In  looking  back  on  the  intellectual  group 
of  New  England,  eighty  years  ago,  nothing  is 
more  noticeable  than  its  birth  in  a  circle  already 
cultivated,  at  least  according  to  the  standard  of 
its  period.  Emerson,  Channing,  Bryant,  Long 
fellow,  Hawthorne,  Holmes,  Lowell,  even  Whit- 
tier,  were  born  into  what  were,  for  the  time 
and  after  their  own  standard,  cultivated  fami 
lies.  They  grew  up  with  the  protection  and  stim 
ulus  of  parents  and  teachers ;  their  early  bio 
graphies  offer  nothing  startling.  Among  them 
appeared,  one  day,  this  student  and  teacher, 
more  serene,  more  absolutely  individual,  than 
any  one  of  them.  He  had  indeed,  like  every  boy 
born  in  New  England,  some  drop  of  academic 
blood  within  his  traditions,  but  he  was  born  in 
the  house  of  his  grandfather,  a  poor  farmer  in 
Wolcott,  Connecticut,  on  November  29,  1799. 
He  went  to  the  most  primitive  of  wayside 
schools,  and  was  placed  at  fourteen  as  appren 
tice  in  a  clock  factory ;  was  for  a  few  years 
a  traveling  peddler,  selling  almanacs  and  trin 
kets  ;  then  wandered  as  far  as  North  Carolina 
and  Virginia  in  a  similar  traffic ;  then  became 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"      79 

a  half-proselyte  among  Quakers  in  North  Car 
olina  ;  then  a  school-teacher  in  Connecticut ; 
always  poor,  but  always  thoughtful,  ever  grav 
itating  towards  refined  society,  and  finally  com 
ing  under  the  influence  of  that  rare  and  high- 
minded  man,  the  Rev.  Samuel  J.  May,  and 
placing  himself  at  last  in  the  still  more  favored 
position  of  Emerson's  foot-note.  When  that 
took  place,  it  suddenly  made  itself  clear  to  the 
whole  Concord  circle  that  there  was  not  one 
among  them  so  serene,  so  equable,  so  dreamy, 
yet  so  constitutionally  a  leader,  as  this  wander 
ing  child  of  the  desert.  Of  all  the  men  known 
in  New  England,  he  seemed  the  one  least  likely 
to  have  been  a  country  peddler. 

Mr.  Alcott  first  visited  Concord,  as  Mr. 
Cabot's  memoir  of  Emerson  tells  us,  in  1835, 
and  in  1 840  came  there  to  live.  But  it  was  as 
early  as  May  19,  1837,  that  Emerson  wrote  to 
Margaret  Fuller  :  "Mr.  Alcott  is  the  great  man, 
His  book  ['  Conversations  on  the  Gospels '  ] 
does  him  no  justice,  and  I  do  not  like  to  see  it. 
.."j'«4  But  he  has  more  of  the  Godlike  than  any 
man  I  have  ever  seen  and  his  presence  rebukes 
and  threatens  and  raises.  He  is  a  teacher.  .  .  . 
If  he  cannot  make  intelligent  men  feel  the  pre 
sence  of  a  superior  nature,  the  worse  for  them ; 
I  can  never  doubt  him."  *  It  is  suggested  by 

1  Sanborn  and  Harris's  Alcott,  ii,  566. 


8o      EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

Dr.  W.  T.  Harris,  one  of  the  two  joint  biogra 
phers  of  Alcott,  that  the  description  in  the  last 
chapter  of  Emerson's  book  styled  "Nature," 
finished  in  August,  1836,  was  derived  from  a 
study  of  Mr.  Alcott,  and  it  is  certain  that  there 
was  no  man  among  Emerson's  contemporaries 
of  whom  thenceforward  he  spoke  with  such  ha 
bitual  deference.  Courteous  to  all,  it  was  to  Al 
cott  alone  that  he  seemed  to  look  up.  Not  merely 
Alcott's  abstract  statements,  but  his  personal 
judgments,  made  an  absolutely  unique  impres 
sion  upon  his  more  famous  fellow  townsman.  It 
is  interesting  to  notice  that  Alcott,  while  stay 
ing  first  in  Concord,  "complained  of  lack  of 

simplicity  in  A ,  B ,  C ,  and  D 

(late  visitors  from  the  city)."  Emerson  said  ap 
provingly  to  his  son  :  "  Alcott  is  right  touch 
stone  to  test  them,  litmus  to  detect  the  acid." l 
We  cannot  doubt  that  such  a  man's  own  judg 
ment  was  absolutely  simple ;  and  such  was 
clearly  the  opinion  held  by  Emerson,  who, 
indeed,  always  felt  somewhat  easier  when  he 
could  keep  Alcott  at  his  elbow  in  Concord. 
Their  mutual  confidence  reminds  one  of  what 
was  said  long  since  by  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson, 
that  poetry  was  like  brown  bread :  those  who 
made  it  in  their  own  houses  never  quite  liked 
the  taste  of  what  they  got  elsewhere. 

1  Emerson  in  Concord,  120. 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"    81 

And  from  the  very  beginning,  this  attitude 
was  reciprocated.  At  another  time  during  that 
same  early  period  (1837),  Alcott,  after  criticis 
ing  Emerson  a  little  for  "  the  picture  of  vulgar 
life  that  he  draws  with  a  Shakespearian  bold 
ness,"  closes  with  this  fine  tribute  to  the  in 
trinsic  qualities  of  his  newly  won  friend  :  "  Ob 
serve  his  style  ;  it  is  full  of  genuine  phrases 
from  the  Saxon.  He  loves  the  simple,  the  nat 
ural  ;  the  thing  is  sharply  presented,  yet  graced 
by  beauty  and  elegance.  Our  language  is  a  fit 
organ,  as  used  by  him  ;  and  we  hear  classic 
English  once  more  from  northern  lips.  Shake 
speare,  Sidney,  Browne,  speak  again  to  us,  and 
we  recognize  our  affinity  with  the  fathers  of 
English  diction.  Emerson  is  the  only  instance 
of  original  style  among  Americans.  Who  writes 
like  him  ?  Who  can  ?  None  of  his  imitators, 
surely.  The  day  shall  come  when  this  man's 
genius  shall  shine  beyond  the  circle  of  his  own 
city  and  nation.  Emerson's  is  destined  to  be 
the  high  literary  name  of  this  age."  l 

No  one  up  to  that  time,  probably,  had  uttered 
an  opinion  of  Emerson  quite  so  prophetic  as 
this ;  it  was  not  until  four  years  later,  in  1841, 
that  even  Carlyle  received  the  first  volume 
of  Emerson's  "  Essays"  and  said,  "  It  is  once 
more  the  voice  of  a  man."  Yet  from  that 

1  Sanborn  and  Harris's  Alcott,  i,  264. 


82     EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

moment  Alcott  and  Emerson  became  united, 
however  inadequate  their  twinship  might  have 
seemed  to  others.  Literature  sometimes,  doubt 
less,  makes  strange  friendships.  There  is  a 
tradition  that  when  Browning  was  once  intro 
duced  to  a  new  Chinese  ambassador  in  London, 
the  interpreter  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  both  poets.  Upon  Browning's  cour 
teously  asking  how  much  poetry  His  Excel 
lency  had  thus  far  written,  he  replied,  "  Four 
volumes,"  and  when  asked  what  style  of  poetic 
art  he  cultivated,  the  answer  was,  "  Chiefly  the 
enigmatical."  It  is  reported  that  Browning 
afterwards  charitably  or  modestly  added,  "  We 
felt  doubly  brothers  after  that."  It  may  have 
been  in  a  similar  spirit  that  Emerson  and  his 
foot-note  might  seem  at  first  to  have  united 
their  destinies. 

Emerson  at  that  early  period  saw  many  defects 
in  Alcott's  style,  even  so  far  as  to  say  that  it 
often  reminded  him  of  that  vulgar  saying,  "  All 
stir  and  no  go  "  ;  but  twenty  years  later,  in  1855, 
he  magnificently  vindicated  the  same  style,  then 
grown  more  cultivated  and  powerful,  and,  indeed, 
wrote  thus  of  it :  "I  have  been  struck  with  the 
late  superiority  Alcott  showed.  His  interlocu 
tors  were  all  better  than  he :  he  seemed  child 
ish  and  helpless,  not  apprehending  or  answering 
their  remarks  aright,  and  they  masters  of  their 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"    83 

weapons.  But  by  and  by,  when  he  got  upon  a 
thought,  like  an  Indian  seizing  by  the  mane  and 
mounting  a  wild  horse  of  the  desert,  he  overrode 
them  all,  and  showed  such  mastery,  and  took  up 
Time  and  Nature  like  a  boy's  marble  in  his  hand, 
as  to  vindicate  himself."  l 

A  severe  test  of  a  man's  depth  of  observation 
lies  always  in  the  analysis  he  gives  of  his  neigh 
bor's  temperament ;  even  granting  this  appre 
ciation  to  be,  as  is  sometimes  fairly  claimed,  a 
woman's  especial  gift.  It  is  a  quality  which  cer 
tainly  marked  Alcott,  who  once  said,  for  instance, 
of  Emerson's  combination  of  a  clear  voice  with 
a  slender  chest,  that  "some  of  his  organs  were 
free,  some  fated."  Indeed,  his  power  in  the 
graphic  personal  delineations  of  those  about  him 
was  almost  always  visible,  as  where  he  called 
Garrison  "a  phrenological  head  illuminated," 
or  said  of  Wendell  Phillips,  "  Many  are  the 
friends  of  his  golden  tongue."  This  quality  I 
never  felt  more,  perhaps,  than  when  he  once  said, 
when  dining  with  me  at  the  house  of  James  T. 
Fields,  in  1862,  and  speaking  of  a  writer  whom 
I  thought  I  had  reason  to  know  pretty  well : 
"  He  has  a  love  of  wholeness;  in  this  respect  far 
surpassing  Emerson." 

It  is  scarely  possible,  for  any  one  who  recalls 
from  his  youth  the  antagonism  and  satire  called 

1  Sanborn  and  Harris's  Alcott,  i,  262. 


84     EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

forth  by  Alcott's  "sayings"  in  the  early  "  Dial," 
to  avoid  astonishment  at  their  more  than  con 
temptuous  reception.  Take,  for  example,  in  the 
very  first  number  the  fine  saying  on  "  Enthu 
siasm,"  thus: — 

"Believe,  youth,  that  your  heart  is  an  oracle;  trust 
her  instinctive  auguries  ;  obey  her  divine  leadings  ; 
nor  listen  too  fondly  to  the  uncertain  echoes  of  your 
head.  The  heart  is  the  prophet  of  your  soul,  and 
ever  fulfils  her  prophecies  ;  reason  is  her  historian ; 
but  for  the  prophecy,  the  history  would  not  be. 
.  .  .  Enthusiasm  is  the  glory  and  hope  of  the  world. 
It  is  the  life  of  sanctity  and  genius  ;  it  has  wrought 
all  miracles  since  the  beginning  of  time." 

Or  turn  to  the  following  (entitled  :  "  IV.  Im 
mortality  ") :  — 

"  The  grander  my  conception  of  being,  the  nobler 
my  future.  There  can  be  no  sublimity  of  life  with 
out  faith  in  the  soul's  eternity.  Let  me  live  superior 
to  sense  and  custom,  vigilant  alway,  and  I  shall  ex 
perience  my  divinity;  my  hope  will  be  infinite, 
nor  shall  the  universe  contain,  or  content  me." 

Or  read  this  ("  XII.    Temptation  ") :  — 

"Greater  is  he  who  is  above  temptation,  than 
he  who,  being  tempted,  overcomes.  The  latter  but 
regains  the  state  from  which  the  former  has  not 
fallen.  He  who  is  tempted  has  sinned.  Temptation 
is  impossible  to  the  holy." 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"    85 
Or  this  ("  LXXXVIII.   Renunciation  ")  :— 

"Renounce  the  world,  yourself;  and  you  shall 
possess  the  world,  yourself,  and  God." 

These  are  but  fragments,  here  and  there.  For 
myself,  I  would  gladly  see  these  "  Orphic  Say 
ings  "  reprinted  to-morrow,  and  watch  the  aston 
ishment  of  men  and  women  who  vaguely  recall 
the  derision  with  which  they  were  first  greeted 
more  than  sixty  years  ago. 

When  it  came  to  putting  into  action  these 
high  qualities,  the  stories  relating  to  Mr.  Alcott 
which  seem  most  improbable  are  those  which  are 
unquestionably  true,  as  is  that  of  his  way  of  deal 
ing  with  a  man  in  distress  who  came  to  beg  of 
him  the  loan  of  five  dollars.  To  this  Alcott  re 
plied,  after  searching  his  pockets,  that  he  had 
no  such  bank-note  about  him,  but  could  lend  him 
ten  dollars.  This  offer  was  accepted,  and  Alcott 
did  not  even  ask  the  borrower's  name,  and  could 
merely  endure  the  reproach  or  ridicule  of  his 
friends  for  six  months ;  after  which  the  same 
man  appeared  and  paid  back  the  money,  offer 
ing  interest,  which  was  refused.  The  debtor 
turned  out  to  be  a  well-known  swindler,  to  whom 
this  trusting  generosity  had  made  a  novel  and 
manly  appeal. 

Truth  and  honesty  are  apt  to  be  classed  in 
men's  minds  together,  but  the  power  of  making 
money,  or  even  of  returning  it  when  loaned,  is 


86     EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

sometimes  developed  imperfectly  among  those 
who  are  in  other  respects  wise  and  good.  A  cu 
rious  illustration  of  this  may  be  found  in  the 
published  memoirs  of  Mr.  Alcott  (i,  349),  but 
it  is  quite  surpassed  by  the  following  narrative, 
hitherto  unpublished,  of  a  subsequent  interview, 
even  more  picturesque,  and  apparently  with  the 
self-same  creditor.  I  take  it  from  his  MS.  Diary, 
where  it  appears  with  the  formality  of  arrange 
ment  and  beauty  of  handwriting  which  mark 
that  extraordinary  work. 

(MAMMON) 
April,  1839.  Thursday,  i8th. — 

Things  seem  strange  to  me  out  there  in  Time  and 
Space.  I  am  not  familiar  with  the  order  and  usages 
of  this  realm.  I  am  at  home  in  the  kingdom  of  the 
Soul  alone. 

This  day,  I  passed  along  our  great  thoroughfare, 
gliding  with  Emerson's  check  in  my  pocket,  into 
State  Street ;  and  stepped  into  one  of  Mammon's 
temples,  for  some  of  the  world's  coin,  wherewith  to 
supply  bread  for  this  body  of  mine,  and  those  who 
depend  upon  me.  But  I  felt  dishonored  by  resorting 
to  these  haunts  of  Idolaters.  I  went  not  among  them 
to  dig  in  the  mines  of  Lucre,  nor  to  beg  at  the  doors 
of  the  God.  It  was  the  hour  for  business  on  'Change, 
which  was  swarming  with  worshippers.  Bevies  of  de 
votees  were  consulting  on  appropriate  rites  whereby 
to  honor  their  divinity. 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"    87 

One  of  these  devotees  (cousin-german  of  my  wife) 
accosted  me,  as  I  was  returning,  and  asked  me  to 
bring  my  oblation  with  the  others.  Now  I  owed 
the  publican  a  round  thousand,  which  he  proffered 
me  in  days  when  his  God  prospered  his  wits ;  but 
I  had  nothing  for  him.  That  small  pittance  which  I 
had  just  got  snugly  into  my  fob  (thanks  to  my  friend 

E )  was  not  for  him,  but  for  my  wife's  nurse, 

and  came  just  in  time  to  save  my  wife  from  distrust 
ing  utterly  the  succors  of  Providence.  I  told  my  man, 
that  I  had  no  money ;  but  he  might  have  me,  if  he 
wanted  me.  No  :  I  was  bad  stock  in  the  market ; 
and  so  he  bid  me  good-day.  I  left  the  buzz  and  hum 
of  these  devotees,  who  represent  old  Nature's  re 
lation  to  the  Appetites  and  Senses,  and  returned, 
with  a  sense  of  grateful  relief,  from  this  sally  into 
the  Kingdom  of  Mammon,  back  to  my  domicile 
in  the  Soul. 

There  was,  however,  strangely  developed  in 
Alcott's  later  life  an  epoch  of  positively  earning 
money.  His  first  efforts  at  Western  lectures  be 
gan  in  the  winter  of  185 3-54,  and  he  returned  in 
February,  1854.  He  was  to  give  a  series  of  talks 
on  the  representative  minds  of  New  England, 
with  the  circle  of  followers  surrounding  each;  the 
subj  ects  of  his  discourse  being  Webster,  Greeley, 
Garrison,  Margaret  Fuller,  Theodore  Parker, 
Greenough,  and  Emerson  ;  the  separate  themes 
being  thus  stated  as  seven,  an£  the  number  of 
conversations  as  only  six.  Terms  for  the  course 


88     EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

were  three  dollars.  By  his  daughter  Louisa's  testi 
mony  he  returned  late  at  night  with  a  single  dol 
lar  in  his  pocket,  this  fact  being  thus  explained 
in  his  own  language  :  "  Many  promises  were  not 
kept  and  travelling  is  costly  ;  but  I  have  opened 
the  way,  and  another  year  shall  do  better." l  At 
any  rate,  his  daughter  thus  pathetically  described 
his  appearance  at  this  interview,  as  her  mother 
wrote  to  a  friend  :  "  He  looked  as  cold  and  thin 
as  an  icicle  ;  but  as  serene  as  God." 2 

There  is  an  almost  dramatic  interest  in  trans 
ferring  our  imaginations  to  the  later  visit  he 
made  westward,  when  he  was  eighty-one  years 
old,  between  October,  1880,  and  May,  1881.  He 
then  traveled  more  than  five  thousand  miles, 
lectured  or  held  conversations  at  the  rate  of 
more  than  one  a  day,  Sundays  included,  and 
came  back  with  a  thousand  dollars,  although 
more  than  half  of  his  addresses  had  been  gratu 
itous.  For  seven  years  after  this  he  was  the 
nominal  dean  of  the  so-called  "  School  of  Phi 
losophy  "  in  Concord,  and  for  four  years  took 
an  active  part  in  its  lectures  and  discussions. 
His  last  written  works  were  most  appropriately 
two  sonnets  on  "  Immortality/'  this  being  the 
only  theme  remaining  inexhaustibly  open. 

Perhaps  no  two  persons  in  the  world  were  in 

1  Sanborn  and  Harris's  Alcott,  ii,  477. 
a  Memoirs,  ii,  473. 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"    89 

their  intellectual  method  more  antipodal  —  to 
use  one  of  Alcott's  favorite  phrases  —  than 
himself  and  Parker,  though  each  stood  near  to 
Emerson  and  ostensibly  belonged  to  the  same 
body  of  thinkers.  In  debate,  the  mere  presence 
of  Parker  made  Alcott  seem  uneasy,  as  if  yield 
ing  just  cause  for  Emerson's  searching  inquiry, 
"Of  what  use  is  genius,  if  its  focus  be  a  little 
too  short  or  too  long  ? "  No  doubt,  Mr.  Alcott 
might  well  be  one  of  those  to  whom  such  criti 
cism  could  fitly  be  applied,  just  as  it  has  been 
used  to  discourage  the  printing  of  Thoreau's 
whole  journal.  Is  it  not  possible  that  Alcott's 
fame  may  yet  be  brought  up  gradually  and 
securely,  like  Thoreau's,  from  those  ample  and 
beautifully  written  volumes  which  Alcott  left 
behind  him? 

Alcott  doubtless  often  erred,  at  first,  in  the 
direction  of  inflation  in  language.  When  the 
Town  and  Country  Club  was  organized  in  Bos 
ton,  and  had  been,  indeed,  established  " largely 
to  afford  a  dignified  occupation  for  Alcott,"  as 
Emerson  said,  Alcott  wished  to  have  it  chris 
tened  either  the  Olympian  Club  or  the  Pan 
Club.  Lowell,  always  quick  at  a  joke,  suggested 
the  substitution  of  "Club  of  Hercules"  instead 
of  "  Olympian  "  ;  or  else  that,  inasmuch  as  the 
question  of  admitting  women  was  yet  undecided, 
"  The  Patty-Pan"  would  be  a  better  name.  But 


90     EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON" 

if  Alcott's  words  were  large,  he  acted  up  to  them. 
When  the  small  assaulting  party  was  driven 
back  at  the  last  moment  from  the  Court  House 
doors  in  Boston,  during  the  Anthony  Burns 
excitement,  and  the  steps  were  left  bare,  the 
crowd  standing  back,  it  was  Alcott  who  came 
forward  and  placidly  said  to  the  ring-leader, 
"  Why  are  we  not  within  ?  "  On  being  told  that 
the  mob  would  not  follow,  he  walked  calmly 
up  the  steps,  alone,  cane  in  hand.  When  a  re 
volver  was  fired  from  within,  just  as  he  had 
reached  the  highest  step,  and  he  discovered 
himself  to  be  still  unsupported,  he  as  calmly 
turned  and  walked  down  without  hastening  a 
footstep.  It  was  hard  to  see  how  Plato  or 
Pythagoras  could  have  done  the  thing  better. 
Again,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  when 
a  project  was  formed  for  securing  the  defense 
of  Washington  by  a  sudden  foray  into  Virginia, 
it  appears  from  his  Diary  that  he  had  been  at 
the  point  of  joining  it,  when  it  was  superseded 
by  the  swift  progress  of  events,  and  so  aban 
doned. 

The  power  of  early  sectarian  training  is  apt 
to  tell  upon  the  later  years  even  of  an  independ 
ent  thinker,  and  so  it  was  with  Alcott.  In  his 
case  a  life-long  ideal  attitude  passed  back  into 
something  hard  to  distinguish  from  old-fash 
ioned  Calvinism.  This  was  especially  noticeable 


EMERSON'S  "FOOT-NOTE  PERSON"    91 

at  the  evening  receptions  of  the  Rev.  Joseph 
Cook,  who  flattered  Alcott  to  the  highest  de 
gree  and  was  met  at  least  halfway  by  the  seer 
himself.  Having  been  present  at  one  or  two  of 
these  receptions,  I  can  testify  to  the  disappoint 
ment  inspired  in  Alcott's  early  friends  at  his 
seeming  willingness  to  be  made  a  hero  in  an 
attitude  quite  alien  to  that  of  his  former  self. 
The  "  New  International,"  for  instance,  recog 
nizes  that  "  in  later  years  his  manner  became 
more  formal  and  his  always  nebulous  teaching 
apparently  more  orthodox."  Be  this  as  it  may, 
the  man  whom  Emerson  called  "the  most  ex 
traordinary  man  and  highest  genius  of  the 
time,"  and  of  whom  he  says,  "As  pure  intel 
lect  I  have  never  seen  his  equal,"  such  a  man 
needed  only  the  fact  of  his  unprotected  foot 
steps  under  fire  up  the  stairs  of  the  Boston 
Court  House  to  establish  him  in  history  as  a 
truly  all-round  man, —  unsurpassed  among  those 
of  his  own  generation  even  in  physical  pluck. 


IX 

GEORGE   BANCROFT 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 

GEORGE  BANCROFT,  who  died  in  Washington, 
D.  C,  on  January  17,  1891,  was  born  at  Worces 
ter,  Massachusetts,  October  3,  1800,  being  the 
son  of  Aaron  and  Lucretia  (Chandler)  Bancroft. 
His  first  American  ancestor  in  the  male  line  was 
John  Bancroft,  who  came  to  this  country  from 
England,  arriving  on  June  12,  1632,  and  settling 
at  Lynn,  Massachusetts.  There  is  no  evidence 
of  any  especial  literary  or  scholarly  tastes  in  his 
early  ancestors,  although  one  at  least  among 
them  became  a  subject  for  literature,  being  the 
hero  of  one  of  Cotton  Mather's  wonderful  tales 
of  recovery  from  smallpox.  Samuel  Bancroft, 
grandfather  of  the  great  historian,  was  a  man 
in  public  station,  and  is  described  by  Savage  as 
"possessing  the  gift  of  utterance  in  an  eminent 
degree"  ;  and  the  historian's  father,  Rev  Aaron 
Bancroft,  D.  D.,  was  a  man  of  mark.  He  was 
born  in  1755,  fought  at  Lexington  and  Bunker 
Hill  when  almost  a  boy,  was  graduated  at  Har 
vard  College  in  1778,  studied  for  the  ministry, 
preached  for  a  time  in  Nova  Scotia,  was  settled 
at  Worcester  in  1788,  and  died  there  in  1839. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  American  Academy 


96  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

of  Arts  and  Sciences,  was  an  Arminian  in 
theology,  and  in  later  life  was  President  of  the 
American  Unitarian  Association.  He  published 
various  occasional  sermons,  a  volume  of  doc 
trinal  discourses,  and  (in  1807)  a  "  Life  of  Wash 
ington,"  which  was  reprinted  in  England,  and 
rivaled  in  circulation  the  larger  work  of  Mar 
shall,  which  appeared  at  about  the  same  time. 
He  thus  bequeathed  literary  tastes  to  his  thir 
teen  children ;  and  though  only  one  of  these 
reached  public  eminence,  yet  three  of  the  daugh 
ters  were  prominent  for  many  years  in  Worces 
ter,  being  in  charge  of  a  school  for  girls,  and 
highly  esteemed  ;  while  another  sister  was  well 
known  in  Massachusetts  and  at  Washington  as 
the  wife  of  Governor  (afterwards  Senator)  John 
Davis. 

George  Bancroft  was  fitted  for  college  at 
Exeter  Academy,  where  he  was  especially  noted 
for  his  fine  declamation.  He  entered  Harvard 
College  in  1813,  taking  his  degree  in  1817.  He 
was  the  classmate  of  four  men  destined  to  be 
actively  prominent  in  the  great  anti-slavery 
agitation  a  few  years  later,  —  Samuel  J.  May, 
Samuel  E.  Sewall,  David  Lee  Child,  and  Robert 
F.  Wallcut,  —  and  of  one  prospective  opponent 
of  it,  Caleb  Cushing.  Other  men  of  note  in  the 
class  were  the  Rev.  Stephen  H.  Tyng,  D.  D., 
the  Rev.  Alva  Woods,  D.  D.,  and  Samuel  A. 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  97 

Eliot,  afterwards  Treasurer  of  the  College  and 
father  of  its  recent  President.  Mr.  Bancroft 
was  younger  than  any  of  these,  and  very  prob 
ably  the  youngest  in  his  class,  being  less  than 
seventeen  at  graduation.  He  was,  however, 
second  in  rank,  and  it  happened  that  Edward 
Everett,  then  recently  appointed  Professor  of 
Greek  Literature  in  that  institution,  had  pro 
posed  that  some  young  graduate  of  promise 
should  be  sent  to  Germany  for  purposes  of 
study,  that  he  might  afterwards  become  one  of 
the  corps  of  Harvard  instructors.  Accordingly, 
Bancroft  was  selected,  and  went,  in  the  early 
summer  of  1818,  to  Gottingen.  At  that  time  the 
University  had  among  its  professors  Eichhorn, 
Heeren,  and  Blumenbach.  He  also  studied  at 
Berlin,  where  he  knew  Schleiermacher,  Savigny, 
and  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt.  At  Jena  he  saw 
Goethe,  and  at  Heidelberg  studied  under  Schlos- 
ser.  This  last  was  in  the  spring  of  1821,  when 
he  had  already  received  his  degree  of  Ph.  D.  at 
Gottingen  and  was  making  the  tour  of  Europe. 
At  Paris  he  met  Cousin,  Constant,  and  Alex 
ander  von  Humboldt ;  he  knew  Manzoni  at 
Milan,  and  Bunsen  and  Niebuhr  at  Rome.  The 
very  mention  of  these  names  seems  to  throw 
his  early  career  far  back  into  the  past.  Such 
experiences  were  far  rarer  then  than  now,  and 
the  return  from  them  into  what  was  the  village- 


98  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

like  life,  of  Harvard  College  was  a  far  greater 
change.  Yet  he  came  back  at  last  and  dis 
charged  his  obligations,  in  a  degree,  by  a  year's 
service  as  Greek  tutor. 

It  was  not,  apparently,  a  satisfactory  position, 
for  although  he  dedicated  a  volume  of  poems 
to  President  Kirkland,  "with  respect  and  affec 
tion,"  as  to  his  "early  benefactor  and  friend," 
yet  we  have  the  testimony  of  George  Ticknor 
(in  Miss  Ticknor's  Life  of  J.  G.  Cogswell)  that 
Bancroft  was  "  thwarted  in  every  movement  by 
the  President."  Mr.  Ticknor  was  himself  a  pro 
fessor  in  the  college,  and  though  his  view  may 
not  have  been  dispassionate,  he  must  have  had 
the  opportunity  of  knowledge.  His  statement 
is  rendered  more  probable  by  the  fact  that  he 
records  a  similar  discontent  in  the  case  of  Pro 
fessor  J.  G.  Cogswell,  who  was  certainly  a  man 
of  conciliatory  temperament.  By  Ticknor's  ac 
count,  Mr.  Cogswell,  who  had  been  arranging  the 
Harvard  College  Library  and  preparing  the  cat 
alogue,  was  quite  unappreciated  by  the  Corpo 
ration,  and  though  Ticknor  urged  both  him  and 
Bancroft  to  stay,  they  were  resolved  to  leave, 
even  if  their  proposed  school  came  to  nothing. 
The  school  in  question  was  the  once  famous 
"Round  Hill"  at  Northampton,  in  which  enter 
prise  Cogswell,  then  thirty-six,  and  Bancroft, 
then  twenty-three,  embarked  in  1823.  The  latter 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  99 

had  already  preached  several  sermons,  and 
seemed  to  be  feeling  about  for  his  career ;  but 
it  now  appeared  as  if  he  had  found  it. 

In  embarking,  however,  he  warbled  a  sort  of 
swan-song  at  the  close  of  his  academical  life,  and 
published  in  September,  1823,  a  small  volume 
of  eighty  pages,  printed  at  the  University  Press, 
Cambridge,  and  entitled  "  Poems  by  George  Ban 
croft.  Cambridge :  Hilliard  &  Metcalf."  Some 
of  these  were  written  in  Switzerland,  some  in 
Italy,  some,  after  his  return  home,  at  Worces 
ter;  but  almost  all  were  European  in  theme, 
and  neither  better  nor  worse  than  the  average 
of  such  poems  by  young  men  of  twenty  or  there 
abouts.  The  first,  called  "Expectation,"  is  the 
most  noticeable,  for  it  contains  an  autobiographi 
cal  glimpse  of  this  young  academical  Childe 
Harold  setting  forth  on  his  pilgrimage  :  — 

"  'T  was  in  the  season  when  the  sun 

More  darkly  tinges  spring's  fair  brow, 
And  laughing  fields  had  just  begun 

The  summer's  golden  hues  to  show. 
Earth  still  with  flowers  was  richly  dight, 
And  the  last  rose  in  gardens  glowed ; 
In  heaven's  blue  tent  the  sun  was  bright, 
And  western  winds  with  fragrance  flowed ; 
'T  was  then  a  youth  bade  home  adieu  ; 

And  hope  was  young  and  life  was  new, 
When  first  he  seized  the  pilgrim's  wand 
To  roam  the  far,  the  foreign  land. 


loo  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

"  There  lives  the  marble,  wrought  by  art. 

That  clime  the  youth  would  gain ;  he  braves 
The  ocean's  fury,  and  his  heart 

Leaps  in  him,  like  the  sunny  waves 
That  bear  him  onward ;  and  the  light 

Of  hope  within  his  bosom  beams, 
Like  the  phosphoric  ray  at  night 

That  round  the  prow  so  cheerly  gleams. 
But  still  his  eye  would  backward  turn, 

And  still  his  bosom  warmly  burn, 
As  towards  new  worlds  he  'gan  to  roam, 
With  love  for  Freedom's  Western  home." 

This  is  the  opening  poem  ;  the  closing  words 
of  the  book,  at  the  end  of  the  final  "  Pictures 
of  Rome,"  are  in  a  distinctly  patriotic  strain  :  — 

"  Farewell  to  Rome ;  how  lovely  in  distress  ; 
How  sweet  her  gloom  ;  how  proud  her  wilderness  ! 
Farewell  to  all  that  won  my  youthful  heart, 
And  waked  fond  longings  after  fame.  We  part. 
The  weary  pilgrim  to  his  home  returns ; 
For  Freedom's  air,  for  Western  climes  he  burns  ; 
Where  dwell  the  brave,  the  generous,  and  the  free, 
O  !  there  is  Rome ;  no  other  Rome  for  me." 

It  was  in  order  to  train  these  young  children 
of  the  Republic  — "  the  brave,  the  generous, 
and  the  free"  —  that  Bancroft  entered  upon 
the  "  Round  Hill  "  enterprise. 

This  celebrated  school  belonged  to  that  class 
of  undertakings  which  are  so  successful  a& 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  101 

to  ruin  their  projectors.  It  began  in  a  modest 
way ;  nothing  could  be  more  sensible  than  the 
"Prospectus,"  —  a  pamphlet  of  twenty  pages, 
issued  at  Cambridge,  June  20,  1823.  In  this 
there  is  a  clear  delineation  of  the  defects  then 
existing  in  American  schools ;  and  a  modest 
promise  is  given  that,  aided  by  the  European 
experience  of  the  two  founders,  something  like 
a  French  college  or  a  Gexm&n  gymnasium  might 
be  created.  There  were  to  be  not  more  than 
twenty  pupils,  who  were  to  be  from  nine  to 
twelve  on  entering.  A  fine  estate  was  secured 
at  Northampton,  and  pupils  soon  came  in. 

Then  followed  for  several  years  what  was 
at  least  a  very  happy  family.  The  school  was 
to  be  in  many  respects  on  the  German  plan  : 
farm  life,  friendly  companionship,  ten-mile  ram 
bles  through  the  woods  with  the  teachers,  and 
an  annual  walking  tour  in  the  same  company. 
All  instruction  was  to  be  thorough ;  there  was 
to  be  no  direct  emulation,  and  no  flogging. 
There  remain  good  delineations  of  the  school 
in  the  memoirs  of  Dr.  Cogswell,  and  in  a  paper 
by  the  late  T.  G.  Appleton,  one  of  the  pupils. 
It  is  also  described  by  Duke  Bernard  of  Saxe- 
Weimar  in  his  "Travels."  The  material  of  the 
school  was  certainly  fortunate.  Many  men  after 
wards  noted  in  various  ways  had  their  early 
training  there:  J.  L.  Motley,  H.  W.  Bellows, 


102  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

R.  T.  S.  Lowell,  F.  Schroeder,  Ellery  Channing, 
G.  E.  Ellis,  Theodore  Sedgwick,  George  C. 
Shattuck,  S.  G.  Ward,  R.  G.  Shaw,  N.  B.  Shurt- 
leff,  George  Gibbs,  Philip  Kearney,  R.  G.  Harper. 
At  a  dinner  given  to  Dr.  Cogswell  in  1864,  the 
most  profuse  expressions  of  grateful  reminis 
cence  were  showered  upon  Mr.  Bancroft,  though 
he  was  then  in  Europe.  The  prime  object  of 
the  school,  as  stated  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  was  "to 
teach  more  thoroughly  than  has  ever  been  taught 
among  us."  How  far  this  was  accomplished  can 
only  be  surmised ;  what  is  certain  is  that  the 
boys  enjoyed  themselves.  They  were  admirably 
healthy,  not  having  a  case  of  illness  for  six 
teen  months,  and  they  were  happy.  When  we 
say  that,  among  other  delights,  the  boys  had  a 
large  piece  of  land  where  they  had  a  boy-village 
of  their  own,  a  village  known  as  Cronyville,  a 
village  where  each  boy  erected  his  own  shanty 
and  built  his  own  chimney,  where  he  could 
roast  apples  and  potatoes  on  a  winter  evening 
and  call  the  neighbors  in,  —  when  each  boy  had 
such  absolute  felicity  as  this,  with  none  to  mo 
lest  him  or  make  him  afraid,  there  is  no  wonder 
that  the  "old  boys"  were  ready  to  feast  their 
kindly  pedagogues  forty  years  later. 

But  to  spread  barracks  for  boys  and  crony 
villages  over  the  delightful  hills  of  Northamp 
ton  demanded  something  more  than  kindliness  ; 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  103 

it  needed  much  administrative  skill  and  some 
money.  Neither  Cogswell  nor  Bancroft  was  a 
man  of  fortune.  Instead  of  twenty  boys,  they 
had  at  one  time  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven, 
nearly  fifty  of  whom  had  to  be  kept  through  the 
summer  vacation.  They  had  many  Southern 
pupils  and,  as  an  apparent  consequence,  many 
bad  debts,  Mr.  Cogswell  estimating  a  loss  of 
two  thousand  dollars  from  this  cause  in  a  single 
year ;  and  sometimes  they  had  to  travel  south 
ward  to  dun  delinquent  parents.  The  result  of 
it  all  was  that  Bancroft  abandoned  the  enter 
prise  after  seven  years,  in  the  summer  of  1830; 
while  Cogswell,  who  held  on  two  years  longer, 
retired  with  health  greatly  impaired  and  a  finan 
cial  loss  of  twenty  thousand  dollars.  Thus  ended 
the  Round  Hill  School. 

While  at  Round  Hill,  Mr.  Bancroft  prepared 
some  text-books  for  his  pupils,  translating  Hee- 
ren's  "Politics  of  Ancient  Greece"  (1824)  and 
Jacobs's  Latin  Reader  (1825), — the  latter  going 
through  several  editions.  His  first  article  in  the 
"North  American  Review,"  then  the  leading 
literary  journal  in  the  United  States,  appeared 
in  October,  1823,  and  was  a  notice  of  Schiller's 
"  Minor  Poems,"  with  many  translations.  From 
this  time  forward  he  wrote  in  almost  every  vol 
ume,  but  always  on  classical  or  German  themes, 
until  in  January,  1831,  he  took  up  "  The  Bank 


104  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

of  the  United  States,"  and  a  few  years  later 
(October,  1835),  "Tne  Documentary  History  of 
the  Revolution."  These  indicated  the  progress 
of  his  historical  studies,  which  had  also  begun  at 
Round  Hill,  and  took  form  at  last  in  his  great 
history.  The  design  of  this  monumental  work 
was  as  deliberate  as  Gibbon's,  and  almost  as 
vast ;  and  the  author  lived,  like  Gibbon,  to  see 
it  accomplished.  The  first  volume  appeared  in 
1834,  the  second  in  1837,  the  third  in  1840,  the 
fourth  in  1852,  and  so  onward.  Between  these 
volumes  was  interspersed  a  variety  of  minor  es 
says,  some  of  which  were  collected  in  a  volume 
of  "Literary  and  Historical  Miscellanies,"  pub 
lished  in  1855.  Bancroft  also  published,  as  a 
separate  work,  a  "  History  of  the  Formation  of 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States"  (1882). 
While  at  Northampton,  he  was  an  ardent 
Democrat  of  the  most  theoretic  and  philosophic 
type,  and  he  very  wisely  sought  to  acquaint 
himself  with  the  practical  side  of  public  affairs. 
In  1826  he  gave  an  address  at  Northampton, 
defining  his  position  and  sympathies;  in  1830 
he  was  elected  to  the  Legislature,  but  declined 
to  take  his  seat,  and  the  next  year  refused  a 
nomination  to  the  Senate.  In  1835  he  drew  up 
an  address  to  the  people  of  Massachusetts,  made 
many  speeches  and  prepared  various  sets  of 
resolutions,  was  flattered,  traduced,  caricatured. 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  105 

From  1838  to  1841  he  was  Collector  of  the  Port 
of  Boston;  in  1844  ne  was  Democratic  candi 
date  for  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  but  was 
defeated,  —  George  N.  Briggs  being  his  success 
ful  antagonist,  —  although  he  received  more 
votes  than  any  Democratic  candidate  before 
him.  In  1845  he  was  Secretary  of  the  Navy 
under  President  Polk.  In  all  these  executive 
positions  he  may  be  said  to  have  achieved  suc 
cess.  It  was,  for  instance,  during  his  term  of 
office  that  the  Naval  Academy  was  established 
at  Annapolis ;  it  was  he  who  gave  the  first  order 
to  take  possession  of  California;  and  he  who, 
while  acting  for  a  month  as  Secretary  of  War, 
gave  the  order  to  General  Taylor  to  march  into 
Texas,  thus  ultimately  leading  to  the  annexa 
tion  of  that  state.  This,  however,  identified 
him  with  a  transaction  justly  censurable,  and 
indeed  his  whole  political  career  occurred  dur 
ing  the  most  questionable  period  of  Democratic 
subserviency  to  the  slave  power,  and  that  weak 
ness  was  never  openly  —  perhaps  never  sin 
cerely  —  resisted  by  him.  This  left  a  reproach 
upon  his  earlier  political  career  which  has, 
however,  been  effaced  by  his  literary  life  and 
his  honorable  career  as  a  diplomatist.  In  1846 
he  was  transferred  from  the  Cabinet  to  the 
post  of  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  Great  Brit 
ain,  where  he  contrived  to  combine  historical 


106  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

researches  with  public  functions.  In  1849  ne 
returned  to  this  country  —  a  Whig  administra 
tion  having  been  elected  —  and  took  up  his  resi 
dence  in  New  York.  In  February,  1866,  he  was 
selected  by  Congress  to  pronounce  a  eulogy  on 
President  Lincoln,  and  in  the  following  year  he 
was  appointed  Minister  to  Prussia,  being  after 
wards  successively  accredited  to  the  North  Ger 
man  Confederation  and  the  German  Empire. 
In  these  positions  he  succeeded  in  effecting 
some  important  treaty  provisions  in  respect  to 
the  rights  of  naturalized  German  citizens  resid 
ing  in  Germany.  He  was  recalled  at  his  own 
request  in  1874,  and  thenceforward  resided  in 
Washington  in  the  winter,  and  at  Newport, 
Rhode  Island,  in  summer. 

Dividing  his  life  between  these  two  abodes, 
he  passed  his  later  years  in  a  sort  of  existence 
more  common  in  Europe  than  here,  —  the  well- 
earned  dignity  of  the  scholar  who  has  also  been, 
in  his  day,  a  man  of  affairs,  and  who  is  yet  too 
energetic  to  repose  upon  his  laurels  or  waste 
much  time  upon  merely  enjoying  the  meed  of 
fame  he  has  won.  In  both  his  winter  and  sum 
mer  abodes  he  had  something  of  the  flattering 
position  of  First  Citizen ;  he  was  free  of  all 
sets,  an  honored  member  of  all  circles.  His 
manners  were  often  mentioned  as  "courtly," 
but  they  never  quite  rose  to  the  level  of  either 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  107 

of  the  two  classes  of  manner  described  by 
Tennyson  :  — 

"  Kind  nature  is  the  best,  those  manners  next 
That  fit  us  like  a  nature  second-hand ; 
Which  are  indeed  the  manners  of  the  great." 

Neither  of  these  descriptions  exactly  fitted 
Mr.  Bancroft ;  his  manners  were  really  of  the 
composite  sort,  and  curiously  suggestive  of 
the  different  phases  of  his  life.  They  were 
like  that  wonderful  Japanese  lacquer-work,  made 
up  of  twenty  or  thirty  different  coats  or  films, 
usually  laid  on  by  several  different  workmen. 
There  was  at  the  foundation  the  somewhat  for 
mal  and  literal  manner  of  the  scholar,  almost 
of  the  pedagogue :  then  one  caught  a  glimpse 
of  an  executive,  official  style,  that  seemed  to 
date  from  the  period  when  he  ordered  California 
to  be  occupied  ;  and  over  all  there  was  a  varnish 
of  worldly  courtesy,  enhanced  by  an  evident 
pleasure  in  being  admired,  and  broken  by  an 
occasional  outburst  of  rather  blunt  sincerity. 

But  he  matured  and  mellowed  well ;  his  social 
life  at  Washington  was  more  satisfactory  to 
himself  and  others  than  that  he  led  in  New 
York  ;  he  had  voluntarily  transplanted  himself 
to  a  community  which,  with  all  its  faults  and 
crudities,  sets  intellect  above  wealth,  and  readily 
conceded  the  highest  place  to  a  man  like  Ban- 


io8  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

croft.  Foreign  ministers  came  accredited  to  him 
as  well  as  to  the  government ;  he  was  the  friend 
of  every  successive  administration,  and  had  as 
many  guests  as  he  cared  to  see  at  his  modest 
Sunday  evening  receptions.  There  he  greeted 
every  one  cordially,  aided  by  a  wife  amply  gifted 
in  the  amenities.  He  was  kind  to  everybody, 
and  remembered  the  father  or  grandfather  of 
anybody  who  had  any  such  ancestors  whom  it 
was  desirable  to  mention.  In  summer,  at  New 
port,  it  was  the  same ;  his  residence  was  like 
that  described  by  his  imagination  in  one  of  his 
own  early  poems  — 

"  Where  heaven  lends  her  loveliest  scene, 
A  softened  air,  a  sky  serene, 
Along  the  shore  where  smiles  the  sea." 

Unlike  most  Newport  "cottages,"  his  house 
was  within  sight  of  the  ocean ;  between  it  and 
the  sea  lay  the  garden,  and  the  "  rose  in  Ken- 
mure's  cap"  in  the  Scottish  ballad  was  not  a 
characteristic  more  invariable  than  the  same 
flower  in  Mr.  Bancroft's  hand  or  buttonhole. 
His  form  was  familiar,  too,  on  Bellevue  Ave 
nue,  taking  as  regularly  as  any  old-fashioned 
Englishman  his  daily  horseback  exercise.  At 
the  same  time  he  was  one  of  the  few  men  who 
were  capable,  even  in  Newport,  of  doing  daily 
the  day's  work ;  he  rose  fabulously  early  in  the 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  109 

morning,  and  kept  a  secretary  or  two  always 
employed.  Since  John  Quincy  Adams,  there  has 
not  been  among  us  such  an  example  of  labori 
ous,  self-exacting,  seemingly  inexhaustible  old 
age ;  and,  unlike  Adams,  Mr.  Bancroft  kept  his 
social  side  always  fresh  and  active,  and  did  not 
have,  like  the  venerable  ex- President,  to  force 
himself  out  in  the  evening  in  order  "to  learn 
the  art  of  conversation."  This  combination, 
with  his  monumental  literary  work,  will  keep 
his  memory  secure.  It  will  possibly  outlive  that 
of  many  men  of  greater  inspiration,  loftier  aims, 
and  sublimer  qualities. 

Mr.  Bancroft,  as  an  historian,  combined  some 
of  the  greatest  merits  and  some  of  the  pro- 
foundest  defects  ever  united  in  a  single  author. 
His  merits  are  obvious  enough.  He  had  great 
enthusiasm  for  his  subject.  He  was  profoundly 
imbued  with  that  democratic  spirit  without 
which  the  history  of  the  United  States  cannot 
be  justly  written.  He  has  the  graphic  quality 
so  wanting  in  Hildreth,  and  the  piquancy  whose 
absence  makes  Prescott  too  smooth.  He  has  a 
style  essentially  picturesque,  whatever  may  be 
its  faults.  The  reader  is  compelled  to  admit  that 
his  resources  in  the  way  of  preparation  are 
inexhaustible,  and  that  his  command  of  them 
is  astounding.  One  must  follow  him  minutely, 
for  instance,  through  the  history  of  the  War  for 


no  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

Independence,  to  appreciate  in  full  the  consum 
mate  grasp  of  a  mind  which  can  deploy  mili 
tary  events  in  a  narrative  as  a  general  deploys 
brigades  in  a  field.  Add  to  this  the  capacity 
for  occasional  maxims  to  the  highest  degree 
profound  and  lucid,  in  the  way  of  political  philo 
sophy,  and  you  certainly  combine  in  one  man 
some  of  the  greatest  qualities  of  the  historian. 
Against  this  are  to  be  set  very  grave  faults. 
In  his  earlier  editions  there  was  an  habitual 
pomposity  and  inflation  of  style  which  the 
sterner  taste  of  his  later  years  has  so  modified 
that  we  must  now  condone  it.  The  same  heroic 
revision  has  cut  off  many  tame  and  common 
place  remarks  as  trite  as  those  virtuous  truisms 
by  which  second-rate  actors  bring  down  the  ap 
plause  of  the  galleries  at  cheap  theatres.  Many 
needless  philosophical  digressions  have  shared 
the  same  fate.  But  many  faults  remain.  There 
is,  in  the  first  place,  that  error  so  common  with 
the  graphic  school  of  historians,  —  the  exag 
gerated  estimate  of  manuscript  or  fragmentary 
material  at  the  expense  of  what  is  printed  and 
permanent.  In  many  departments  of  history 
this  dependence  is  inevitable ;  but,  unfortu 
nately,  Mr.  Bancroft  was  not,  except  in  the  very 
earliest  volumes  of  his  history,  dealing  with 
such  departments.  The  loose  and  mythical  pe 
riod  of  our  history  really  ends  with  Captain  John 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  in 

Smith.  From  the  moment  when  the  Pilgrims 
landed,  the  main  facts  of  American  history  are 
to  be  found  recorded  in  a  series  of  carefully 
prepared  documents,  made  by  men  to  whom  the 
pen  was  familiar,  and  who  were  exceedingly 
methodical  in  all  their  ways.  The  same  is  true 
of  all  the  struggles  which  led  to  the  Revolution, 
and  of  all  those  which  followed.  They  were  the 
work  of  honest-minded  Anglo-Saxon  men  who, 
if  they  issued  so  much  as  a  street  hand-bill,  said 
just  what  they  meant,  and  meant  precisely  what 
they  said.  To  fill  the  gaps  in  this  solid  docu 
mentary  chain  is,  no  doubt,  desirable,  —  to  fill 
them  by  every  passing  rumor,  every  suggestion 
of  a  French  agent's  busy  brain  ;  but  to  substitute 
this  inferior  matter  for  the  firmer  basis  is  wrong. 
Much  of  the  graphic  quality  of  Mr.  Bancroft's 
writing  is  obtained  by  this  means,  and  this  por 
tends,  in  certain  directions,  a  future  shrinkage 
and  diminution  in  his  fame. 

A  fault  far  more  serious  than  this  is  one 
which  Mr.  Bancroft  shared  with  his  historical 
contemporaries,  but  in  which  he  far  exceeded 
any  of  them,  —  an  utter  ignoring  of  the  very 
meaning  and  significance  of  a  quotation-mark. 
Others  of  that  day  sinned.  The  long  controversy 
between  Jared  Sparks  and  Lord  Mahon  grew  out 
of  this, — from  the  liberties  taken  by  Sparks  in 
editing  Washington's  letters.  Professor  Edward 


112  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

T.  Channing  did  the  same  thing  in  quoting  the 
racy  diaries  of  his  grandfather,  William  Ellery, 
and  substituting,  for  instance,  in  a  passage  cited 
as  original,  "  We  refreshed  ourselves  with  meat 
and  drink,"  for  the  far  racier  "We  refreshed 
our  Stomachs  with  Beefsteaks  and  Grogg." 
Hildreth,  in  quoting  from  the  "  Madison  Papers," 
did  the  same,  for  the  sake  not  of  propriety,  but 
of  convenience ;  even  Frothingham  made  im 
portant  omissions  and  variations,  without  indi 
cating  them,  in  quoting  Hooke's  remarkable 
sermon,  "New  England's  Teares."  But  Ban 
croft  is  the  chief  of  sinners  in  this  respect ; 
when  he  quotes  a  contemporary  document  or 
letter,  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  tell,  with 
out  careful  verifying,  whether  what  he  gives  us 
between  the  quotation-marks  is  precisely  what 
should  be  there,  or  whether  it  is  a  compilation, 
rearrangement,  selection,  or  even  a  series  of 
mere  paraphrases  of  his  own.  It  would  be  easy 
to  illustrate  this  abundantly,  especially  from  the 
Stamp  Act  volume ;  but  a  single  instance  will 
suffice. 

When,  in  1684,  an  English  fleet  sailed  into 
Boston  harbor,  ostensibly  on  its  way  to  attack 
the  Dutch  settlements  on  the  Hudson,  it  left 
behind  a  royal  commission,  against  whose  mis 
sion  of  interference  the  colonial  authorities  at 
once  protested,  and  they  issued  a  paper,  as  one 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  113 

historian  has  said,  "  in  words  so  clear  and  digni 
fied  as  to  give  a  foretaste  of  the  Revolution 
ary  state  papers  that  were  to  follow  a  century 
later."  If  ever  there  was  a  document  in  our  pre- 
Revolutionary  history  that  ought  to  be  quoted 
precisely  as  it  was  written,  or  not  at  all,  it  was 
this  remonstrance.  It  thus  begins  in  Bancroft's 
version,  and  the  words  have  often  been  cited 
by  others.  He  says  of  the  colony  of  Massachu 
setts  :  "  Preparing  a  remonstrance,  not  against 
deeds  of  tyranny,  but  the  menace  of  tyranny, 
not  against  actual  wrong,  but  against  a  principle 
of  wrong,  on  the  25th  of  October,  it  thus  ad 
dressed  King  Charles  II."  The  alleged  address 
is  then  given,  apparently  in  full,  and  then  fol 
lows  the  remark,  "  The  spirit  of  the  people  cor 
responded  with  this  address."  It  will  hardly  be 
believed  that  there  never  was  any  such  address, 
and  that  no  such  document  was  ever  in  exist 
ence  as  that  so  formally  cited  here.  Yet  any 
one  who  will  compare  Bancroft's  draft  with  the 
original  in  the  Records  of  Massachusetts  (vol 
ume  iv,  part  2,  pages  168-169)  will  be  instantly 
convinced  of  this.  Bancroft  has  simply  taken 
phrases  and  sentences  here  and  there  from  a 
long  document  and  rearranged,  combined,  and, 
in  some  cases,  actually  paraphrased  them  in  his 
own  way.  Logically  and  rhetorically  the  work 
is  his  own.  The  colonial  authorities  adopted 


Ii4  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

their  own  way  of  composition,  and  he  adopted 
his.  In  some  sentences  we  have  Bancroft,  not 
Endicott ;  the  nineteenth  century,  not  the  seven 
teenth.  Whether  the  transformation  is  an  im 
provement  or  not  is  not  the  question  ;  the  thing 
cited  is  not  the  original.  An  accurate  historian 
would  no  more  have  issued  such  a  restatement 
under  the  shelter  of  quotation-marks  than  an 
accurate  theologian  would  have  rewritten  the 
Ten  Commandments  and  read  his  improved 
edition  from  the  pulpit.  And  it  is  a  curious  fact 
that  while  Mr.  Bancroft  has  amended  so  much 
else  in  his  later  editions,  he  has  left  this  pas 
sage  untouched,  and  still  implies  an  adherence 
to  the  tradition  that  this  is  the  way  to  write 
history. 

It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  the  evil  is  doubled 
when  this  practice  is  combined  with  the  other 
habit,  already  mentioned,  of  relying  largely 
upon  manuscript  authorities.  If  an  historian 
garbles,  paraphrases,  and  rearranges  when  he 
is  dealing  with  matter  accessible  to  all,  how 
much  greater  the  peril  when  he  is  dealing  with 
what  is  in  written  documents  held  under  his 
own  lock  and  key.  It  is  not  necessary  to  allege 
intentional  perversion,  but  we  are,  at  the  very 
least,  absolutely  at  the  mercy  of  an  inaccurate 
habit  of  mind.  The  importance  of  this  point  is 
directly  manifested  on  opening  the  leaves  of 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  115 

Mr.  Bancroft's  last  and  perhaps  most  valuable 
book,  "The  History  of  the  Constitution."  The 
most  important  part  of  this  book  consists,  by 
concession  of  all,  in  the  vast  mass  of  selections 
from  the  private  correspondence  of  the  period  : 
for  instance,  of  M.  Otto,  the  French  Ambassa 
dor.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that,  if  tried  by 
the  standard  of  Mr.  Bancroft's  previous  literary 
methods,  this  mass  of  correspondence,  though 
valuable  as  suggestion,  is  worthless  as  authority. 
Until  it  has  been  carefully  collated  and  com 
pared  with  the  originals,  we  do  not  know  that 
a  paragraph  or  a  sentence  of  it  is  left  as  the 
author  wrote  it ;  the  system  of  paraphrase  pre 
viously  exhibited  throws  the  shadow  of  doubt 
over  all.  No  person  can  safely  cite  one  of  these 
letters  in  testimony;  no  person  knows  whether 
any  particular  statement  contained  in  it  comes 
to  us  in  the  words  of  its  supposed  author  or  of 
Mr.  Bancroft.  It  is  no  -answer  to  say  that  this 
loose  method  was  the  method  of  certain  Greek 
historians;  if  Thucydides  composed  speeches 
for  his  heroes,  it  was  at  least  known  that  he 
prepared  them,  and  there  was  not  the  standing 
falsehood  of  a  quotation-mark. 

A  drawback  quite  as  serious  is  to  be  found 
in  this,  that  Mr.  Bancroft's  extraordinary  labors 
in  old  age  were  not  usually  devoted  to  revising 
the  grounds  of  his  own  earlier' judgments,  but 


n6  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

to  perfecting  his  own  style  of  expression,  and  to 
weaving  in  additional  facts  at  those  points  which 
especially  interested  him.  Professor  Agassiz 
used  to  say  that  the  greatest  labor  of  the  stu 
dent  of  biology  came  from  the  enormous  diffi 
culty  of  keeping  up  with  current  publications 
and  the  proceedings  of  societies ;  a  man  could 
carry  on  his  own  observations,  but  he  could  not 
venture  to  publish  them  without  knowing  all 
the  latest  statements  made  by  other  observers. 
Mr.  Bancroft  had  to  encounter  the  same  obsta 
cle  in  his  historical  work,  and  it  must  be  owned 
that  he  sometimes  ignored  it.  Absorbed  in  his 
own  great  stores  of  material,  he  often  let  the 
work  of  others  go  unobserved.  It  would  be  easy 
to  multiply  instances.  Thus,  the  controversies 
about  Verrazzano's  explorations  were  conven 
iently  settled  by  omitting  his  name  altogether ; 
there  was  no  revision  of  the  brief  early  state 
ment  that  the  Norse  sagas  were  "mythologi 
cal,"  certainly  one  of  the  least  appropriate 
adjectives  that  could  have  been  selected;  Mr. 
Bancroft  never  even  read  —  up  to  within  a  few 
years  of  his  death,  at  any  rate  —  the  important 
monographs  of  Varnhagen  in  respect  to  Amer 
igo  Vespucci ;  he  did  not  keep  up  with  the  pub 
lications  of  the  historical  societies.  Laboriously 
revising  his  whole  history  in  1876,  and  almost 
rewriting  it  for  the  edition  of  1884,  he  allowed 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  117 

the  labors  of  younger  investigators  to  go  on 
around  him  unobserved.  The  consequence  is 
that  much  light  has  been  let  in  upon  American 
history  in  directions  where  he  has  not  so  much 
as  a  window ;  and  there  are  points  where  his 
knowledge,  vast  as  it  is,  will  be  found  to  have 
been  already  superseded.  In  this  view,  that  can-, 
not  be  asserted  of  him  which  the  late  English 
historian,  Mr.  J.  R.  Green,  proudly  and  justly 
claimed  for  himself :  "  I  know  what  men  will 
say  of  me  —  he  died  learning."  But  Mr.  Ban 
croft  at  least  died  laboring,  and  in  the  harness. 
Mr.  Bancroft  was  twice  married,  first  to  Miss 
Sarah  H.  Dwight,  who  died  June  26,  1837,  an(i 
in  the  following  year  to  Mrs.  Elizabeth  (Davis) 
Bliss.  By  the  first  marriage  he  had  several  chil 
dren,  of  whom  John  Chandler  (Harvard,  1854) 
died  in  Europe,  and  George  (Harvard,  1856) 
has  spent  most  of  his  life  in  foreign  countries. 


X 

CHARLES   ELIOT   NORTON 


CHARLES   ELIOT   NORTON 

IT  is  a  tradition  in  the  city  of  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  that  Howells  used  to  exult,  on 
arriving  from  his  Western  birthplace,  in  having 
at  length  met  for  the  first  time,  in  Charles  Eliot 
Norton,  the  only  man  he  had  ever  seen  who 
had  been  cultivated  up  to  the  highest  point  of 
which  he  was  capable.  To  this  the  verdict  of  all 
Cambridge  readily  assented.  What  the  neigh 
bors  could  not  at  that  time  foresee  was  that  the 
man  thus  praised  would  ever  live  to  be  an  octo 
genarian,  or  that  in  doing  so  he  would  share 
those  attractions  of  constantly  increasing  mild 
ness  and  courtesy  which  are  so  often  justly 
claimed  for  advancing  years.  There  was  in  him, 
at  an  earlier  period,  a  certain  amount  of  visible 
self-will,  and  a  certain  impatience  with  those 
who  dissented  from  him,  —  he  would  not  have 
been  his  father's  son  had  it  been  otherwise.  But 
these  qualities  diminished,  and  he  grew  serener 
and  more  patient  with  others  as  the  years  went 
on.  Happy  is  he  who  has  lived  long  enough  to 
say  with  Goethe,  "  It  is  only  necessary  to  grow 
old  to  become  more  indulgent.  I  see  no  fault 
committed  which  I  have  not  committed  myself." 


122  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

This  milder  and  more  genial  spirit  increased 
constantly  as  Norton  grew  older,  until  it  served 
at  last  only  to  make  his  high-bred  nature  more 
attractive. 

He  was  born  in  Cambridge,  November  16, 
1827,  and  died  in  the  very  house  where  he  was 
born,  October  21,  1908.  He  was  descended,  like 
several  other  New  England  authors,  from  a 
line  of  Puritan  clergymen.  He  was  the  son  of 
Prof essor  Andrews  Norton,  of  Harvard  Univer 
sity,  who  was  descended  from  the  Rev.  John 
Norton,  born  in  Ipswich,  Massachusetts,  in  165 1. 
The  mother  of  the  latter  was  the  daughter  of 
Emanuel  Downing,  and  the  niece  of  Governor 
John  Winthrop.  Mrs.  Bradstreet,  the  well- 
known  Puritan  poetess,  was  also  an  ancestress 
of  Charles  Norton.  His  mother,  Mrs.  Caroline 
(Eliot)  Norton,  had  also  her  ancestry  among 
the  most  cultivated  families  in  New  England, 
the  name  of  Eliot  having  been  prominent  for 
successive  generations  in  connection  with  Har 
vard  College.  His  parents  had  a  large  and  beau 
tiful  estate  in  Cambridge,  and  were  (if  my  mem 
ory  serves  me  right)  the  one  family  in  Cambridge 
that  kept  a  carriage,  —  a  fact  the  more  impressed 
upon  remembrance  because  it  bore  the  initials 
"A.  &  C.  N."  upon  the  panels,  the  only  instance 
I  have  ever  seen  in  which  the  two  joint  pro 
prietorships  were  thus  expressed.  This,  and 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON  123 

the  fact  that  I  learned  by  heart  in  childhood 
Wordsworth's  poem,  "  The  White  Doe  of  Ryl- 
stone,  or  The  Fate  of  the  Nortons,"  imparted 
to  my  youthful  mind  a  slight  feeling  of  romance 
about  the  Cambridge  household  of  that  name, 
which  was  not  impaired  by  the  fact  that  our 
parents  on  both  sides  were  intimate  friends, 
that  we  lived  in  the  same  street  (now  called 
Kirkland  Street),  and  that  I  went  to  dancing- 
school  at  the  Norton  house.  It  is  perhaps  humil 
iating  to  add  that  I  disgraced  myself  on  the 
very  first  day  by  cutting  off  little  Charlie's  front 
hair  as  a  preliminary  to  the  dancing  lesson. 

The  elder  Professor  Norton  was  one  of  the 
most  marked  characters  in  Cambridge,  and, 
although  never  a  clergyman,  was  professor  in 
the  Theological  School.  It  was  said  of  him  by 
George  Ripley,  with  whom  he  had  a  bitter  con 
test,  that  "  He  often  expressed  rash  and  hasty 
judgments  in  regard  to  the  labors  of  recent  or 
contemporary  scholars,  consulting  his  preju 
dices,  as  it  would  seem,  rather  than  competent 
authority.  But  in  his  own  immediate  department 
of  sacred  learning  he  is  entitled  to  the  praise  of 
sobriety  of  thought  and  profoundness  of  investi 
gation  "  (Frothingham's"  Ripley,"  105).  He  was 
also  a  man  of  unusual  literary  tastes,  and  his 
"  Select  Journal  of  Foreign  Periodical  Litera 
ture,"  although  too  early  discontinued,  took  dis- 


124  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

tinctly  the  lead  of  all  American  literary  journals 
up  to  that  time. 

The  very  beginning  of  Charles  Norton's  ca 
reer  would  seem  at  first  sight  singularly  in  con 
trast  with  his  later  pursuits,  and  yet  doubtless 
had  formed,  in  some  respects,  an  excellent  pre 
paration  for  them.  Graduating  at  Harvard  in 
1846,  and  taking  a  fair  rank  at  graduation,  he 
was  soon  after  sent  into  a  Boston  counting-house 
to  gain  a  knowledge  of  the  East  India  trade. 
In  1849  ne  went  as  supercargo  on  a  merchant 
ship  bound  for  India,  in  which  country  he  trav 
eled  extensively,  and  returned  home  through 
Europe  in  1851.  There  are  few  more  inter 
esting  studies  in  the  development  of  literary 
individuality  than  are  to  be  found  in  the  suc 
cessive  works  bearing  Norton's  name,  as  one 
looks  through  the  list  of  them  in  the  Harvard 
Library.  The  youth  who  entered  upon  litera 
ture  anonymously,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  as 
a  compiler  of  hymns  under  the  title  of  "  Five 
Christmas  Hymns"  in  1852,  and  followed  this 
by  "  A  Book  of  Hymns  for  Young  Persons " 
in  1854,  did  not  even  flinch  from  printing  the 
tragically  Calvinistic  verse  which  closes  Addi- 
son's  famous  hymn,  beginning  "  The  Lord  my 
pasture  shall  prepare,"  with  a  conclusion  so 
formidable  as  death's  "gloomy  horrors"  and 
"dreadful  shade."  In  1855  he  edited,  with  Dr. 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON  125 

Ezra  Abbot,  his  father's  translations  of  the  Gos 
pels  with  notes  (2  vols.),  and  his  "  Evidences 
of  the  Genuineness  of  the  Gospels  "  (3  vols.). 
Charles  Norton  made  further  visits  to  Europe 
in  1855-57,  and  again  resided  there  from  1868 
until  1873;  during  which  time  his  rapidly  ex 
panding  literary  acquaintanceships  quite  weaned 
his  mind  from  the  early  atmosphere  of  theology. 

Although  one  of  the  writers  in  the  very  first 
number  of  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  he  had  no 
direct  part  in  its  planning.  He  wrote  to  me 
(January  9,  1899),  "  I  am  sorry  that  I  can  tell  you 
nothing  about  the primordia  of  the  'Atlantic.' 
I  was  in  Europe  in  1856-57,  whence  I  brought 
home  some  MSS.  for  the  new  magazine."  It 
appears  from  his  later  statement  in  the  Anni 
versary  Number  that  he  had  put  all  these  manu 
scripts  by  English  authors  in  a  trunk  together, 
but  that  this  trunk  and  all  the  manuscripts  were 
lost,  except  one  accidentally  left  unpacked,  which 
was  a  prose  paper  by  James  Hannay  on  Douglas 
Jerrold,  "who is  hardly,"  as  Norton  justly  says, 
"  to  be  reckoned  among  the  immortals."  Hannay 
is  yet  more  thoroughly  forgotten.  But  this  in 
adequate  service  in  respect  to  foreign  material 
was  soon  more  than  balanced,  as  one  sees  on 
tracing  the  list  of  papers  catalogued  under  Nor 
ton's  name  in  the  Atlantic  Index. 

To  appreciate  the  great  variety  and  thorough 


126  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

preliminary  preparation  of  Norton's  mind,  a 
student  must  take  one  of  the  early  volumes  of 
the  " Atlantic  Monthly"  and  see  how  largely 
he  was  relied  upon  for  literary  notices.  If  we 
examine,  for  instance,  the  fifth  volume  (1860), 
we  find  in  the  first  number  a  paper  on  Clough's 
"  Plutarch's  Lives,"  comprising  ten  pages  of 
small  print  in  double  columns.  There  then  fol 
low  in  the  same  volume  papers  on  Hodson's 
"Twelve  Years  of  a  Soldier's  Life  in  India," 
on  "  Friends  in  Council,"  on  Brooks's  "  Ser 
mons,"  on  Trollope's  "  West  Indies  and  the 
Spanish  Main,"  on  "Captain  John  Brown,"  on 
Vernon's  " Dante,"  and  one  on  "Model  Lodg- 
ing-Houses  in  Boston."  When  we  remember 
that  his  "  Notes  of  Travel  and  Study  in  Italy  " 
was  also  published  in  Boston  that  same  year, 
being  reviewed  by  some  one  in  a  notice  of  two 
pages  in  this  same  volume  of  the  "Atlantic," 
we  may  well  ask  who  ever  did  more  of  genuine 
literary  work  in  the  same  amount  of  time.  This 
was,  of  course,  before  he  became  Professor  in 
the  college  (1874),  and  his  preoccupation  in 
that  way,  together  with  his  continuous  labor 
on  his  translations  of  Dante,  explains  why  there 
are  comparatively  few  entries  under  his  name 
in  Atlantic  Indexes  for  later  years.  Again,  he 
and  Lowell  took  charge  of  the  "  North  Ameri 
can  Review  "  in  1864,  and  retained  it  until  1868, 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON  127 

during  which  period  Norton  unquestionably 
worked  quite  as  hard  as  before,  if  we  may 
judge  by  the  collective  index  to  that  periodical. 
It  is  to  be  noticed,  however,  that  his  papers 
in  the  "North  American  "  are  not  merely  graver 
and  more  prolonged,  but  less  terse  and  highly 
finished,  than  those  in  the  "Atlantic";  while 
in  the  development  of  his  mind  they  show 
even  greater  freedom  of  statement.  He  fear 
lessly  lays  down,  for  instance,  the  following 
assertion,  a  very  bold  one  for  that  period :  "  So 
far  as  the  most  intelligent  portion  of  society  at 
the  present  day  is  concerned,  the  Church  in 
its  actual  constitution  is  an  anachronism.  Much 
of  the  deepest  and  most  religious  life  is  led 
outside  its  wall,  and  there  is  a  constant  and 
steady  increase  in  those  who  not  only  find  the 
claims  of  the  Church  inconsistent  with  spirit 
ual  liberty,  but  also  find  its  services  ill  adapted 
to  their  wants.  ...  It  becomes  more  and  more 
a  simple  assemblage  of  persons  gathered  to  go 
through  with  certain  formal  ceremonies,  the 
chief  of  which  consists  in  listening  to  a  man 
who  is  seldom  competent  to  teach."  It  must 
be  remembered  that  the  expression  of  such 
opinions  to-day,  when  all  his  charges  against 
the  actual  Church  may  be  found  similarly 
stated  by  bishops  and  doctors  of  divinity,  must 
have  produced  a  very  different  impression  when 


128  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

made  forty  years  ago  by  a  man  of  forty  or 
thereabouts,  who  occupied  twenty  pages  in 
saying  it,  and  rested  in  closing  upon  the  calm 
basis,  "The  true  worship  of  God  consists  in 
the  service  of  his  children  and  devotion  to  the 
common  interests  of  men."  It  may  be  that  he 
who  wrote  these  words  never  held  a  regular 
pew  in  any  church  or  identified  himself,  on  the 
other  hand,  with  any  public  heretical  organiza 
tion,  even  one  so  moderate  as  the  Free  Religious 
Association.  Yet  the  fact  that  he  devoted  his 
Sunday  afternoons  for  many  years  to  talking 
and  Scripture  reading  in  a  Hospital  for  Incura 
bles  conducted  by  Roman  Catholics  perhaps 
showed  that  it  was  safer  to  leave  such  a  man 
to  go  on  his  own  course  and  reach  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  in  his  own  way, 

Norton  never  wrote  about  himself,  if  it  could 
be  avoided,  unless  his  recollections  of  early 
years,  as  read  before  the  Cambridge  Historical 
Society,  and  reported  in  the  second  number  of 
its  proceedings,  may  be  regarded  as  an  excep 
tion.  Something  nearest  to  this  in  literary  self- 
revelation  is  to  be  found,  perhaps,  in  his  work 
entitled  "  Letters  of  John  Ruskin,"  published' 
in  1904,  and  going  back  to  his  first  invitation 
from  the  elder  Ruskin  in  1855.  This  was  on 
Norton's  first  direct  trip  to  Europe,  followed  by 
a  correspondence  in  which  Ruskin  writes  to 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTOxN  129 

him,  February  25,  1861,  "You  have  also  done 
me  no  little  good,"  and  other  phrases  which 
show  how  this  American,  nine  years  younger 
than  himself,  had  already  begun  to  influence 
that  wayward  mind.  Their  correspondence  was 
suspended,  to  be  sure,  by  their  difference  of 
attitude  on  the  American  Civil  War ;  but  it  is 
pleasant  to  find  that  after  ten  months  of  si 
lence  Ruskin  wrote  to  Norton  again,  if  bitterly. 
Later  still,  we  find  successive  letters  addressed 
to  Norton — now  in  England  again  —  in  this 
loving  gradation,  "Dear  Norton,"  "  My  dearest 
Norton,"  "My  dear  Charles,"  and  "My  dearest 
Charles,"  and  thenceforth  the  contest  is  won. 
Not  all  completed,  however,  for  in  the  last  years 
of  life  Ruskin  addressed  "  Darling  Charles," 
and  the  last  words  of  his  own  writing  traced  in 
pencil  "  From  your  loving  J.  R." 

I  have  related  especially  this  one  touching 
tale  of  friendship,  because  it  was  the  climax 
of  them  all,  and  the  best  illustration  of  the 
essential  Americanism  of  Norton's  career. 

He  indeed  afforded  a  peculiar  and  almost 
unique  instance  in  New  England,  not  merely 
of  a  cultivated  man  who  makes  his  home  for 
life  in  the  house  where  he  was  born,  but  of  one 
who  has  recognized  for  life  the  peculiar  associa 
tions  of  his  boyhood  and  has  found  them  still 
the  best.  While  Ruskin  was  pitying  him  for 


130  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

being  doomed  to  wear  out  his  life  in  America, 
Norton  with  pleasure  made  his  birthplace  his 
permanent  abode,  and  fully  recognized  the 
attractions  of  the  spot  where  he  was  born. 
"What  a  fine  microcosm,"  he  wrote  to  me 
(January  9,  1899),  "  Cambridge  and  Boston  and 
Concord  made  in  the  4o's."  Norton  affords  in 
this  respect  a  great  contrast  to  his  early  com 
rade,  William  Story,  who  shows  himself  in  his 
letters  wholly  detached  from  his  native  land, 
and  finds  nothing  whatever  in  his  boyhood 
abode  to  attract  him,  although  it  was  always 
found  attractive,  not  merely  by  Norton,  but  by 
Agassiz  and  Longfellow,  neither  of  whom  was 
a  native  of  Cambridge. 

The  only  safeguard  for  a  solitary  literary 
workman  lies  in  the  sequestered  house  without 
a  telephone.  This  security  belonged  for  many 
years  to  Norton,  until  the  needs  of  a  growing 
family  made  him  a  seller  of  land,  a  builder  of 
a  high-railed  fence,  and  at  last,  but  reluctantly, 
a  subscriber  to  the  telephone.  It  needs  but 
little  study  of  the  cards  bearing  his  name  in 
the  catalogue  of  the  Harvard  Library  to  see 
on  how  enormous  a  scale  his  work  has  been 
done  in  this  seclusion.  It  is  then  only  that  one 
remembers  his  eight  volumes  of  delicately 
arranged  scrap-books  extending  from  1861  to 
1866,  and  his  six  volumes  of  "  Heart  of  Oak  " 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON  131 

selections  for  childhood.  There  were  compara 
tively  few  years  of  his  maturerlife  during  which 
he  was  not  editor  of  something,  and  there  was 
also  needed  much  continuous  labor  in 'taking 
care  of  his  personal  library.  When  we  consider 
that  he  had  the  further  responsibility  of  being 
practically  the  literary  executor  or  editor  of 
several  important  men  of  letters,  as  of  Carlyle, 
Ruskin,  Lowell,  Curtis,  and  Clough ;  and  that 
in  each  case  the  work  was  done  with  absolute 
thoroughness  ;  and  that  even  in  summer  he  be 
came  the  leading  citizen  of  a  country  home  and 
personally  engaged  the  public  speakers  who 
made  his  rural  festals  famous,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  no  public  man 
in  America  surpassed  the  sequestered  Norton 
in  steadfastness  of  labor. 

It  being  made  my  duty  in  June,  1904,  to 
read  a  poem  before  the  Harvard  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  I  was  tempted  to  include  a  few  verses 
about  individual  graduates,  each  of  which  was 
left,  according  to  its  subject,  for  the  audience 
to  guess.  The  lines  referring  to  Norton  were 
as  follows :  — 

"  There  's  one  I  've  watched  from  childhood,  free  of 

guile, 

His  man's  firm  courage  and  his  woman's  smile. 
His  portals  open  to  the  needy  still, 
He  spreads  calm  sunshine  over  Shady  Hill." 


132  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

The  reference  to  the  combined  manly  and 
womanly  qualities  of  Norton  spoke  for  itself, 
and  won  applause  even  before  the  place  of  resi 
dence  was  uttered  ;  and  I  received  from  Norton 
this  recognition  of  the  little  tribute :  — 

ASHFIELD,  2  July,  1904. 

MY  DEAR  HIGGINSON,  —  Your  friendly  words 
about  me  in  your  Phi  Beta  poem  give  me  so  much 
pleasure  that  I  cannot  refrain  from  thanking  you 
for  them.  I  care  for  them  specially  as  a  memorial  of 
our  hereditary  friendship.  They  bring  to  mind  my 
Mother's  affection  for  your  Mother,  and  for  Aunt 
Nancy,  who  was  as  dear  an  Aunt  to  us  children  at 
Shady  Hill  as  she  was  to  you  and  your  brothers  and 
sisters.  What  dear  and  admirable  women  !  What 
simple,  happy  lives  they  led !  No  one's  heart  will 
be  more  deeply  touched  by  your  poem  than  mine. 

One  most  agreeable  result  of  Norton's  Cam 
bridge  boyhood  has  not  been  generally  recog 
nized  by  those  who  have  written  about  him.  His 
inherited  estate  was  so  large  that  he  led  a  life 
absolutely  free  in  respect  to  the  study  of  nature, 
and  as  Lowell,  too,  had  the  same  advantage, 
they  could  easily  compare  notes.  In  answer  to 
a  criticism  of  mine  with  reference  to  Longfel 
low's  poem,  "The  Herons  of  Elmwood,"  on  my 
theory  that  these  herons  merely  flew  over  Elm- 
wood  and  only  built  their  nests  in  what  were 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON  133 

then  the  dense  swamps  east  of  Fresh  Pond,  he 
writes  to  me  (January  4,  1899) :  "I  cannot  swear 
that  I  ever  saw  a  heron's  nest  at  Elm  wood.  But 
Lowell  told  me  of  their  nesting  there,  and  only 
a  few  weeks  ago  Mrs.  Burnett  told  me  of  the 
years  when  they  had  built  in  the  pines  and  of 
the  time  of  their  final  desertion  of  the  place." 
To  this  he  adds  in  a  note  dated  five  days  later: 
"As  to  the  night-herons  lighting  on  pines,  for 
many  years  they  were  in  the  habit  of  lighting 
and  staying  for  hours  upon  mine  and  then  fly 
ing  off  towards  the  [Chelsea]  beach."  This  taste 
accounts  for  the  immense  zest  and  satisfaction 
with  which  Norton  edited  a  hitherto  unknown 
manuscript  of  the  poet  Gray's  on  natural  his 
tory,  with  admirable  illustrations  taken  from 
the  original  book,  seeming  almost  incredibly 
accurate  from  any  but  a  professional  naturalist, 
the  book  being  entitled,  "  The  Poet  Gray  as  a 
Naturalist  with  Selections  from  His  Notes  on 
the  Systema  Naturae  of  Linnaeus  with  Facsim 
iles  of  Some  of  his  Drawings." 

In  the  Charles  Eliot  Norton  number  of  the 
"Harvard  Graduates' Magazine  "  commemorat 
ing  his  eightieth  birthday,  Professor  Palmer, 
with  that  singular  felicity  which  characterizes 
him,  says  of  Norton  :  "  He  has  been  an  epitome 
of  the  world's  best  thought  brought  to  our  own 
doors  and  opened  for  our  daily  use."  Edith 


134  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

Wharton  with  equal  felicity  writes  from  Nor 
ton's  well-known  dwelling  at  Ashfield,  whose 
very  name,  "  High  Pasture,"  gives  a  signal  for 
what  follows :  — 

"  Come  up  —  come  up  •  in  the  dim  vale  below 
The  autumn  mist  muffles  the  fading  trees, 
But  on  this  keen  hill-pasture,  though  the  breeze 
Has  stretched  the  thwart  boughs  bare  to  meet  the 

snow, 

Night  is  not,  autumn  is  not  —  but  the  flow 
Of  vast,  ethereal  and  irradiate  seas, 
Poured  from  the  far  world's  flaming  boundaries 
In  waxing  tides  of  unimagined  glow. 

"  And  to  that  height  illumined  of  the  mind 
He  calls  us  still  by  the  familiar  way, 
Leaving  the  sodden  tracks  of  life  behind, 
Befogged  in  failure,  chilled  with  love's  decay  — 
Showing  us,  as  the  night-mists  upward  wind, 
How  on  the  heights  is  day  and  still  more  day." 

But  I  must  draw  to  a  close,  and  shall  do  this 
by  reprinting  the  very  latest  words  addressed 
by  this  old  friend  to  me  ;  these  being  written 
very  near  his  last  days.  Having  been  away  from 
Cambridge  all  summer,  I  did  not  know  that  he 
had  been  at  Cambridge  or  ill,  and  on  my  writing 
to  him  received  this  cheerful  and  serene  answer, 
wholly  illustrative  of  the  man,  although  the  very 
fact  that  it  was  dictated  was  sadly  ominous :  — 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON  135 

SHADY  HILL,  CAMBRIDGE,  MASS., 
6  October,  1908. 

MY  DEAR  HIGGINSON,  —  Your  letter  the  other  day 
from  Ipswich  gave  me  great  pleasure.  .  .  . 

It  had  never  occurred  to  me  that  you  were  asso 
ciated  with  Ipswich  through  your  Appleton  rela 
tives.  My  association  with  the  old  town,  whose 
charm  has  not  wholly  disappeared  under  the  hard 
hoof  of  the  invader,  begins  still  earlier  than  yours, 
for  the  William  Norton  who  landed  there  in  1636 
was  my  direct  ancestor ;  and  a  considerable  part  of 
his  pretty  love  story  seems  to  have  been  transacted 
there.  I  did  not  know  the  story  until  I  came  upon 
it  by  accident,  imbedded  in  some  of  the  volumes  of 
the  multifarious  publications  of  our  historical  soci 
ety.  It  amused  me  to  find  that  John  Norton,  whose 
reputation  is  not  for  romance  or  for  soft-heartedness, 
took  an  active  interest  in  pleading  his  brother's 
cause  with  Governor  Winthrop,  whose  niece,  Lucy 
Downing,  had  won  the  susceptible  heart  of  W.  N. 

My  summer  was  a  very  peaceful  and  pleasant  one 
here  in  my  old  home  till  about  six  weeks  ago,  when 
I  was  struck  down  .  .  .  which  has  left  me  in  a  con 
dition  of  extreme  muscular  feebleness,  but  has  not 
diminished  my  interest  in  the  world  and  its  affairs. 
Happily  my  eyes  are  still  good  for  reading,  and  I 
have  fallen  back,  as  always  on  similar  occasions, 
on  Shakespeare  and  Scott,  but  I  have  read  one  or 
two  new  books  also,  the  best  of  which,  and  a  book 
of  highest  quality,  is  the  last  volume  of  Morley's 
essays. 


136  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

But  I  began  meaning  only  to  thank  you  for  your 
pleasant  note  and  to  send  a  cheer  to  you  from  my 
slower  craft  as  your  gallant  three-master  goes  by  it 
with  all  sails  set.  .  .  . 

Always  cordially  yours, 

C.  E.  NORTON. 


X 

EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

THE  sudden  death  of  Edmund  Clarence  Sted- 
man  at  New  York  on  January  18,  1908,  came 
with  a  strange  pathos  upon  the  readers  of  his 
many  writings,  especially  as  following  so  soon 
upon  that  of  his  life-long  friend  and  compeer, 
Aldrich.  Stedman  had  been  for  some  years  an 
invalid,  and  had  received,  in  his  own  phrase, 
his  "three  calls,"  that  life  would  soon  be  ended. 
He  was  born  at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  on 
October  8,  1833,  and  was  the  second  son  of 
Colonel  Edmund  Burke  Stedman  and  his  wife 
Elizabeth  Clement  (Dodge)  Stedman.  His  great 
grandfather  was  the  Reverend  Aaron  Cleveland, 
Jr.,  a  Harvard  graduate  of  1735,  and  a  man  of 
great  influence  in  his  day,  who  died  in  middle 
life  under  the  hospitable  roof  of  Benjamin  Frank 
lin.  Stedman's  mother  was  a  woman  of  much 
literary  talent,  and  had  great  ultimate  influence 
in  the  training  of  her  son,  although  she  was 
early  married  again  to  the  Honorable  William 
B.  Kinney,  who  was  afterwards  the  United 
States  Minister  to  Turin.  Her  son,  being  placed 
in  charge  of  a  great -uncle,  spent  his  childhood 
in  Norwich,.  Connecticut,  and  entered  Yale  at 
sixteen,  but  did  not  complete  his  course  there, 


140       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

although  in  later  life  he  was  restored  to  his 
class  membership  and  received  the  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts.  He  went  early  into  newspaper 
work  in  Norwich  and  then  in  New  York,  going 
to  the  front  for  a  time  as  newspaper  corre 
spondent  during  the  Civil  War.  He  abandoned 
journalism  after  ten  years  or  thereabouts,  and 
became  a  member  of  the  New  York  Stock  Ex 
change  without  giving  up  his  literary  life,  a 
combination  apt  to  be  of  doubtful  success. 
He  married,  at  twenty,  Laura  Hyde  Wood- 
worth,  who  died  before  him,  as  did  one  of  his 
sons,  leaving  only  one  son  and  a  granddaughter 
as  his  heirs.  His  funeral  services  took  place  at 
the  Church  of  the  Messiah  on  January  21,  1908, 
conducted  by  the  Reverend  Dr.  Robert  Collyer 
and  the  Reverend  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke. 

Those  who  happen  to  turn  back  to  the 
number  of  the  "Atlantic  Monthly"  for  January, 
1898,  will  read  with  peculiar  interest  a  remark 
able  paper  entitled  "  Our  Two  Most  Honored 
Poets."  It  bears  no  author's  name,  even  in  the 
Index,  but  is  what  we  may  venture  to  call,  after 
ten  years,  a  singularly  penetrating  analysis  of 
both  Aldrich  and  Stedman.  Of  the  latter  it  is 
said  :  "His  rhythmic  sense  is  subtle,  and  he 
often  attains  an  aerial  waywardness  of  melody 
which  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  lyric  gift." 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        141 

It  also  remarks  most  truly  and  sadly  of  Sted- 
man  that  he  "is  of  those  who  have  suffered  the 
stress  of  the  day."  The  critic  adds  :  "Just  now 
we  felt  grateful  to  Mr.  Aldrich  for  putting  all 
this  [that  is,  life's  tragedies]  away  in  order  that 
the  clarity  and  sweetness  of  his  art  might  not 
surfer  ;  now  we  feel  something  like  reverence  for 
the  man  [Mr.  Stedman]  who,  in  conditions  which 
make  for  contentment  and  acquiescence,  has  not 
been  able  to  escape  these  large  afflictions."  But 
these  two  gifted  men  have  since  passed  away, 
Aldrich  from  a  career  of  singular  contentment, 
Stedman  after  ten  years  of  almost  constant 
business  failure  and  a  series  of  calamities  re 
lating  to  those  nearest  and  dearest. 

One  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  the  New 
York  literary  organizations,  and  one  who  knew 
Stedman  intimately,  writes  me  thus  in  regard 
to  the  last  years  of  his  life  :  "  As  you  probably 
know,  Stedman  died  poor.  Only  a  few  days  ago 
he  told  me  that  after  paying  all  the  debts  hang 
ing  over  him  for  years  from  the  business  losses 

caused  by 's  mismanagement,  he  had  not 

enough  to  live  on,  and  must  keep  on  with  his 
literary  work.  For  this  he  had  various  plans,  of 
which  our  conversations  developed  only  a  pos 
sible  rearrangement  of  his  past  writings ;  an 
article  now  and  then  for  the  magazines  (one,  I 
am  told,  he  left  completed)  ;  and  reminiscences 


142       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

of  his  old  friends  among  men  of  letters  —  for 
which  last  he  had,  during  eight  months  past, 
been  overhauling  letters  and  papers,  but  had 
written  nothing.  He  was  ailing,  he  said  —  had 
a  serious  heart  affection  which  troubled  him  for 
years,  and  he  found  it  a  daily  struggle  to  keep 
up  with  the  daily  claims  on  his  time.  You  know 
what  he  was,  in  respect  of  letters,  — and  letters. 
He  could  always  say  *  No '  with  animation ; 
but  in  the  case  of  claims  on  his  time  by  poets 
and  other  of  the  writing  class,  he  never  could 
do  the  negative.  He  both  liked  the  claims  and 
didn't.  The  men  who  claimed  were  dear  to 
him,  partly  because  he  knew  them,  partly  be 
cause  he  was  glad  to  know  them.  He  wore 
himself  quite  out.  His  heart  was  exhausted  by 
his  brain.  It  was  a  genuine  case  of  heart-fail 
ure  to  do  what  the  head  required." 

There  lies  before  me  a  mass  of  private  letters 
to  me  from  Stedman,  dating  back  to  November  2, 
1873,  when  he  greeted  me  for  the  first  time  in  a 
kinship  we  had  just  discovered.  We  had  the  same 
great-grandfather,  though  each  connection  was 
through  the  mother,  we  being  alike  great-grand 
children  of  the  Reverend  Aaron  Cleveland,  Jr., 
from  whom  President  Grover  Cleveland  was  also 
descended.  At  the  time  of  this  mutual  discovery 
Stedman  was  established  in  New  York,  and 
although  I  sometimes  met  him  in  person,  I  can 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN       143 

find  no  letters  from  him  until  after  a  period  of 
more  than  ten  years,  when  he  was  engaged  in 
editing  his  Library  of  American  Literature.  He 
wrote  to  me  afterwards,  and  often  with  quite 
cousinly  candor,  —  revealing  frankly  his  cares, 
hopes,  and  sorrows,  but  never  with  anything 
coarse  or  unmanly.  All  his  enterprises  were  con 
fided  to  me  so  far  as  literature  was  concerned, 
and  I,  being  nearly  ten  years  older,  felt  free  to 
say  what  I  thought  of  them.  I  wished,  espe 
cially,  however,  to  see  him  carry  out  a  project 
of  translations  from  the  Greek  pastoral  poetry 
of  Theocritus,  Bion,  and  Moschus.  The  few 
fragments  given  at  the  end  of  his  volumes  had 
always  delighted  me  and  many  other  students, 
while  his  efforts  at  the  "  Agamemnon  "  of  JEs- 
chylus  dealt  with  passages  too  formidable  in 
their  power  for  any  one  but  Edward  FitzGerald 
to  undertake. 

After  a  few  years  of  occasional  correspond 
ence,  there  came  a  lull.  Visiting  New  York 
rarely,  I  did  not  know  of  Stedman's  business 
perplexities  till  they  came  upon  me  in  the  fol 
lowing  letter,  which  was  apparently  called  out 
by  one  of  mine  written  two  months  before. 

71  West  54th  Street, 
NEW  YORK,  July  I2th,  '82. 

MY  DEAR  COLONEL,  —  I  had  gone  over  with  "the 
majority"  [that  is,  to  Europe],  when  your  friendly 


144       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

card  of  May  gih  was  written,  and  it  finally  reached 
me  at  Venice.  In  that  city  of  light,  air,  and  heav 
enly  noiselessness,  my  son  and  myself  at  last  had 
settled  ourselves  in  ideal  rooms,  overlooking  the 
Grand  Canal.  We  had  seclusion,  the  Molo,  the  La 
goon,  and  a  good  cafe,  and  pure  and  cheap  Capri 
wine.  Our  books  and  papers  were  unpacked  for  the 
first  time,  and  I  was  ready  to  make  an  end  of  the 
big  and  burdensome  book  which  I  ought  to  have 
finished  a  year  ago.  Dis  aliter  visum !  The  next 
morning  I  was  awakened  to  receive  news,  by  wire, 
of  a  business  loss  which  brought  me  home,  through 
the  new  Gothard  tunnel  and  by  the  first  steamer. 
Here  I  am,  patching  up  other  people's  blunders,  with 
the  thermometer  in  the  nineties.  I  have  lived  through 
worse  troubles,  but  am  in  no  very  good  humor.  Let 
me  renew  the  amenities  of  life,  by  way  of  improving 
my  disposition :  and  I  '11  begin  by  thanking  you  for 
calling  my  attention  to  the  error  in  re  Palfrey  — 
which,  of  course,  I  shall  correct.  Another  friend  has 
written  me  to  say  that  Lowell's  father  was  a  Uni 
tarian  —  not  a  Congregationalist.  But  Lowell  himself 
told  me,  the  other  day,  that  his  father  never  would 
call  himself  a  Unitarian,  and  that  he  was  old-fash 
ioned  in  his  home  tenets  and  discipline.  Mr.  L. 
[Lowell]  was  under  pretty  heavy  pressure,  as  you 
know,  when  I  saw  him,  but  holding  his  owrr  with 
some  composure  —  for  a  poet.  Again  thanking  you, 
I  am, 

Always  truly  yrs., 

E.  C.  STEDMAN. 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        145 

This  must  have  been  answered  by  some  fur 
ther  expression  of  solicitude,  for  this  reply  came, 
two  months  later,  — 

University  Club,  370  Fifth  Avenue, 
NEW  YORK,  Sunday,  Sept.  16,  1883. 

MY  DEAR  HIGGINSON,  —  There  is  a  good  deal,  say 
what  you  will,  in  "  moral  support."  I  have  proved 
it  during  the  last  few  weeks  :  't  would  have  been 
hard  to  get  through  with  them,  but  for  just  such 
words  as  yours.  And  I  have  had  them  in  such  abun 
dance  that,  despite  rather  poor  displays  of  human 
nature  in  a  sample  of  my  own  manufacture,  I  am 
less  than  ever  a  pessimist. 

As  for  that  which  Sophocles  pronounced  the  father 
of  meanness  —  Trevio, —  both  my  wife  and  myself  have 
been  used  to  it  nearly  all  our  lives,  and  probably 
shall  have,  now,  to  renew  our  old  acquaintance  with 
it.  Though  somewhat  demoralized  by  a  few  years  of 
Philistine  comfort  —  the  Persicos  apparatus,  &c.  —  I 
think  we  shall  get  along  with  sufficient  dignity. 

We  have  suffered  more,  however,  than  the  money- 
loss,  bad  as  that  is.  And  hence  we  are  doubly  grate 
ful  to  those  who,  like  yourself,  send  a  cheery  voice 
to  us  at  just  this  time. 

Ever  sincerely  yrs., 

EDMUND  C.  STEDMAN. 

During  the  next  few  years  we  had  ample  cor 
respondence  of  a  wholly  literary  and  cheerful 
tone.  He  became  engaged  upon  his  Library  of 
American  Literature  with  a  congenial  fellow 


146       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

worker,  Miss  Ellen  Hutchinson,  and  I  was  only 
one  of  many  who  lent  a  hand  or  made  sugges 
tions.  He  was  working  very  hard,  and  once  wrote 
that  he  was  going  for  a  week  to  his  boyhood 
home  to  rest.  During  all  this  period  there  was, 
no  doubt,  the  painful  business  entanglement  in 
the  background,  but  there  was  also  in  the  fore 
ground  the  literary  work  whose  assuaging  in 
fluence  only  one  who  has  participated  in  it  can 
understand.  Then  came  another  blow  in  the 
death  of  his  mother,  announced  to  me  as  fol 
lows  :  — 

44  East  26th  St., 
NEW  YORK,  Dec.  8th,  1889. 

MY  DEAR  HIGGINSON, — Yes :  I  have  been  through 
a  kind  of  Holy  Week,  and  have  come  out  in  so 
incorporeal  a  state  that  I  strive  painfully,  though 
most  gratefully,  to  render  thanks  to  some,  at  least, 
of  my  beautiful  mother's  friends  and  mine  who  have 
taken  note  of  her  departure.  I  have  always  wished 
that  she  and  you  could  know  more  of  each  other  — 
though  nothing  of  yours  escaped  her  eager  taste  and 
judgment,  for  she  was  not  only  a  natural  critic,  but 
a  very  danswoman,  with  a  most  loyal  faith  in  her 
blood  and  yours.  Most  of  all,  she  was  a  typical  wo 
man,  an  intensely  human  one,  to  the  last,  though 
made  of  no  common  clay.  She  was  of  an  age  to  die, 
and  I  am  glad  that  her  fine  intelligence  was  spared 
a  season  of  dimness.  Still,  /  have  suffered  a  loss, 
and  doubtless  one  that  will  last  a  lifetime. 

Sincerely  yours,         E.  C.  STEDMAN. 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        147 

The  laborious  volumes  of  literary  selections 
having  been  completed,  there  followed,  still 
under  the  same  pressure,  another  series  of 
books  yet  more  ambitious.  His  "  Victorian 
Poets"  (1875,  thirteenth  edition  1887)  was  fol 
lowed  by  the  "  Poets  of  America  "  (1885),  "  A 
Victorian  Anthology"  (1895),  and  "An  Amer 
ican  Anthology"  (1900).  These  books  were 
what  gave  him  his  fame,  the  two  former  being 
original  studies  of  literature,  made  in  prose  ; 
and  the  two  latter  being  collections  of  poetry 
from  the  two  nations. 

If  we  consider  how  vast  a  labor  was  repre 
sented  in  all  those  volumes,  it  is  interesting  to 
revert  to  that  comparison  between  Stedman 
and  his  friend  Aldrich  with  which  this  paper 
began.  Their  literary  lives  led  them  apart ;  that 
of  Aldrich  tending  always  to  condensation,  that 
of  Stedman  to  expansion.  As  a  consequence, 
Aldrich  seemed  to  grow  younger  and  younger 
with  years  and  Stedman  older ;  his  work  being 
always  valuable,  but  often  too  weighty,  "  living 
in  thoughts,  not  breaths,"  to  adopt  the  delicate 
distinction  from  Bailey's  "Festus."  There  is 
a  certain  worth  in  all  that  Stedman  wrote,  be 
it  longer  or  shorter,  but  it  needs  a  good  deal  of 
literary  power  to  retain  the  attention  of  readers 
so  long  as  some  of  his  chapters  demand.  Open 
ing  at  random  his  "  Poets  of  America,"  one  may 


148       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

find  the  author  deep  in  a  discussion  of  Lowell, 
for  instance,  and  complaining  of  that  poet's 
prose  or  verse.  "  Not  compactly  moulded," 
Stedman  says,  even  of  much  of  Lowell's  work. 
"  He  had  a  way,  moreover,  of  '  dropping '  like 
his  own  bobolink,  of  letting  down  his  fine  pas 
sages  with  odd  conceits,  mixed  metaphors,  and 
licenses  which,  as  a  critic,  he  would  not  over 
look  in  another.  To  all  this  add  a  knack  of  coin 
ing  uncouth  words  for  special  tints  of  mean 
ing,  when  there  are  good  enough  counters  in 
the  language  for  any  poet's  need."  These  fail 
ings,  Stedman  says,  "have  perplexed  the  poet's 
friends  and  teased  his  reviewers."  Yet  Lowell's 
critic  is  more  chargeable  with  diffuseness  than 
is  Lowell  himself  in  prose  essays,  which  is  say 
ing  a  good  deal.  Stedman  devotes  forty-five 
pages  to  Lowell  and  thirty-nine  even  to  Bayard 
Taylor,  while  he  gives  to  Thoreau  but  a  few 
scattered  lines  and  no  pretense  at  a  chapter. 
There  are,  unquestionably,  many  fine  passages 
scattered  through  the  book,  as  where  he  keenly 
points  out  that  the  first  European  appreciation 
of  American  literature  was  "  almost  wholly  due 
to  grotesque  and  humorous  exploits  —  a  wel 
come  such  as  a  prince  in  his  breathing-hour 
might  give  to  a  new-found  jester  or  clown  "  ; 
and  when  he  says,  in  reply  to  English  criticism, 
that  there  is  "something  worth  an  estimate  in 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        149 

the  division  of  an  ocean  gulf,  that  makes  us 
like  the  people  of  a  new  planet." 

Turning  back  to  Stedman's  earlier  book,  the 
"Victorian  Poets,"  one  finds  many  a  terse  pas 
sage,  as  where  he  describes  Landor  as  a  "  royal 
Bohemian  in  art,"  or  compares  the  same  author's 
death  in  Florence  at  ninety,  a  banished  man, 
to  "the  death  of  some  monarch  of  the  forest, 
most  untamed  when  powerless."  Such  passages 
redeem  a  book  from  the  danger  of  being  forgot 
ten,  but  they  cannot  in  the  long  run  save  it  from 
the  doom  which  awaits  too  great  diffuseness  in 
words.  During  all  this  period  of  hard  work,  he 
found  room  also  for  magazine  articles,  always 
thoroughly  done.  Nowhere  is  there  a  finer  analy 
sis,  on  the  whole,  of  the  sources  of  difficulty 
in  Homeric  translation  than  will  be  found  in 
Stedman's  review  of  Bryant's  translation  of 
Homer,  and  nowhere  a  better  vindication  of  a 
serious  and  carefully  executed  book  ("Atlantic 
Monthly,"  May,  1872).  He  wrote  also  an  ad 
mirable  volume  of  lectures  on  the  "  Nature  and 
Elements  of  Poetry "  for  delivery  at  Johns 
Hopkins  University. 

As  years  went  on,  our  correspondence  in 
evitably  grew  less  close.  On  March  10,  1893, 
he  wrote,  "  I  am  so  driven  at  this  season,  '  let 
alone'  financial  worries,  that  I  have  to  write 
letters  when  and  where  I  can."  Then  follows 


ISO       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

a  gap  of  seven  years  ;  in  1900  his  granddaugh 
ter  writes  on  October  25,  conveying  affectionate 
messages  from  him ;  two  years  after,  April  2, 
1903,  he  writes  himself  in  the  same  key,  then 
adds,  "  Owing  to  difficulties  absolutely  beyond 
my  control,  I  have  written  scarcely  a  line  for 
myself  since  the  Yale  bicentennial  [1901]"; 
and  concludes,  "  I  am  very  warmly  your  friend 
and  kinsman."  It  was  a  full,  easy,  and  natural 
communication,  like  his  old  letters ;  but  it  was 
four  years  later  when  I  heard  from  him  again 
as  follows,  in  a  letter  which  I  will  not  withhold, 
in  spite  of  what  may  be  well  regarded  as  its 
over-sensitiveness  and  somewhat  exaggerated 
tone. 

2643  Broadway,  NEW  YORK  CITY, 

Evening,  March  2oth,  1907. 

MY  DEAR  KINSMAN,  —  Although  I  have  given 
you  no  reason  to  be  assured  of  it,  you  are  still  just 
the  same  to  me  in  my  honor  and  affection  —  you 
are  never,  and  you  never  have  been,  otherwise  in 
my  thoughts  than  my  kinsman  (by  your  first  recog 
nition  of  our  consanguinity)  and  my  friend  ;  yes, 
and  early  teacher,  for  I  long  ago  told  you  that  it 
was  your  essays  that  confirmed  me,  in  my  youth,  in 
the  course  I  chose  for  myself. 

I  am  going  on  to  Aldrich's  funeral,  and  with 
a  rather  lone  and  heavy  heart,  since  I  began  life 
here  in  New  York  with  him  before  the  Civil  War, 
and  had  every  expectation  that  he  would  survive 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN       151 

me :  not  wholly  on  the  score  of  my  seniority,  but 
because  I  have  had  my  "  three  calls  "  and  more,  and 
because  he  has  ever  been  so  strong  and  young 
and  debonair.  Health,  happiness,  ease,  travel,  all 
" things  waregan"  seemed  his  natural  right.  If  I, 
too,  wished  for  a  portion  of  his  felicities,  I  never 
envied  one  to  whom  they  came  by  the  very  fitness 
of  things.  And  I  grieve  the  more  for  his  death,  be 
cause  it  seems  to  violate  that  fitness. 

Now,  I  can't  think  of  meeting  you  on  Friday 
without  first  making  this  poor  and  inadequate 
attempt  to  set  one  thing  right.  Your  latest  letter 
—  I  was,  at  least,  moved  by  it  to  address  myself 
at  once  to  a  full  reply,  but  was  myself  attacked 
that  day  so  sorely  by  the  grippe  that  I  went  to  bed 
before  completing  it  and  was  useless  for  weeks  ; 
the  letter  showed  me  that  you  thought,  as  well  you 
might,  that  I  had  been  hurt  or  vexed  by  something 
you  had  unwittingly  done  or  written.  I  can  say  little 
to-night  but  to  confess  that  no  act,  word,  or  writing, 
of  yours  from  first  to  last  has  not  seemed  to  con 
tain  all  the  friendship,  kindness,  recognition,  that  I 
could  ever  ask  for.  .  .  .  Perhaps  I  have  the  ances 
tral  infirmity  of  clinging  to  my  fealties  for  good  and 
all ;  but,  as  I  say,  you  are  my  creditor  in  every  way, 
and  I  constantly  find  myself  in  sympathy  with  your 
writings,  beliefs,  causes,  judgments.  —  Now  I  recall 
it,  the  very  choice  you  made  of  a  little  lyric  of  mine 
as  the  one  at  my  "  high-water  "  mark  gave  me  a  fine 
sense  of  your  comprehension  —  it  seemed  to  me 
a  case  of  rem  acu  tetigit.  I  am  thoroughly  satisfied 


152       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

to  have  one  man  —  and  that  man  you  —  so  quick  to 
see  just  where  I  felt  that  I  had  been  fortunate.  .  .  . 
For  some  years,  I  venture  to  remind  you,  you 
have  seen  scarcely  anything  of  mine  in  print.  Since 
1900  I  have  had  three  long  and  disabling  illnesses, 
from  two  of  which  it  was  not  thought  I  could  re 
cover.  Between  these,  what  desperate  failure  of 
efforts  to  "catch  up."  Oh,  I  can't  tell  you,  the 
books,  the  letters,  the  debts,  the  broken  contracts. 
Then  the  deaths  of  my  wife  and  my  son,  and  all 
the  sorrows  following ;  the  break-up  of  my  home, 
and  the  labor  of  winding  up  so  much  without  aid. 
But  from  all  the  rack  I  have  always  kept,  separated 
on  my  table,  all  your  letters  and  remembrances  — 
each  one  adding  more,  in  my  mind,  to  the  explana 
tion  I  had  not  written  you.  .  .  . 

Your  attached  kinsman  and  friend, 

EDMUND  C.  STEDMAN. 

Stedman  came  from  Mount  Auburn  to  my 
house  after  the  funeral  of  Aldrich,  with  a  look 
of  utter  exhaustion  on  his  face  such  as  alarmed 
me.  A  little  rest  and  refreshment  brought  him 
to  a  curious  revival  of  strength  and  animation ; 
he  talked  of  books,  men,  and  adventures,  in 
what  was  almost  a  monologue,  and  went  away 
in  comparative  cheerfulness  with  his  faithful 
literary  associate,  Professor  George  E.  Wood- 
berry.  Yet  I  always  associate  him  with  one  of 
those  touching  letters  which  he  wrote  to  me 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        153 

before  the  age  of  the  typewriter,  more  profusely 
than  men  now  write,  and  the  very  fact  that  we 
lived  far  apart  made  him  franker  in  utterance. 
The  following  letter  came  from  Keep  Rock, 
New  Castle,  New  Hampshire,  September  30, 
1887:  — 

"You  are  a  '  noble  kinsman  '  after  all,  of  the  sort 
from  whom  one  is  very  glad  to  get  good  words, 
and  I  have  taken  your  perception  of  a  bit  of  verse 
as  infallible,  ever  since  you  picked  out  three  little 
'  Stanzas  for  Music '  as  my  one  best  thing.  Every 
one  else  had  overlooked  them,  but  I  knew  that  —  as 
Holmes  said  of  his  'Chambered  Nautilus  '  —  they 
were  written  'better  than  I  could.'  By  the  way,  if 
you  will  overhaul  Duyckinck's  *  Encyclopedia  of 
Literature '  in  re  Dr.  Samuel  Mitchill,  you  will  see 
who  first  wrote  crudely  the  '  Chambered  Nautilus.'  " 

Two  years  after,  he  wrote,  April  9,  1889:  — 

"  The  newspapers  warn  me  that  you  are  soon  to 
go  abroad.  ...  I  must  copy  for  you  now  the  song 
which  you  have  kindly  remembered  so  many  years. 
In  sooth,  I  have  always  thought  well  of  your  judg 
ment  as  to  poetry,  since  you  intimated  (in  '  The 
Commonwealth,'  was  it  not  ?)  that  these  three  stan 
zas  of  mine  were  the  thing  worth  having  of  my  sel 
dom-written  verse.  I  will  write  on  the  next  page 
a  passage  which  I  lately  found  in  Hartmann  (a 
wonderful  man  for  a  pessimist),  and  which  conveys 
precisely  the  idea  of  my  song." 


154       EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

To  this  he  adds  as  a  quotation  the  passage 
itself:  — 

"The  souls  which  are  near  without  knowing  it,  and 
which  can  approach  no  nearer  by  ever  so  close  an 
embrace  than  they  eternally  are,  pine  for  a  blending 
which  can  never  be  theirs  so  long  as  they  remain 
distinct  individuals." 

The  song  itself,  which  he  thought,  as  I  did, 
his  high-water  mark,  here  follows.  Its  closing 
verse  appears  to  me  unsurpassed  in  American 
literature. 

STANZAS   FOR   MUSIC 

(From  an  Unfinished  Drama) 

Thou  art  mine,  thou  hast  given  thy  word ; 

Close,  close  in  my  arms  thou  art  clinging ; 

Alone  for  my  ear  thou  art  singing 
A  song  which  no  stranger  hath  heard : 
But  afar  from  me  yet,  like  a  bird, 
Thy  soul,  in  some  region  unstirred, 

On  its  mystical  circuit  is  winging. 

Thou  art  mine,  I  have  made  thee  mine  own ; 
Henceforth  we  are  mingled  forever: 
But  in  vain,  all  in  vain,  I  endeavor  — 

Though  round  thee  my  garlands  are  thrown, 

And  thou  yieldest  thy  lips  and  thy  zone  — 

To  master  the  spell  that  alone 
My  hold  on  thy  being  can  sever. 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN        155 

Thou  art  mine,  thou  hast  come  unto  me ! 
But  thy  soul,  when  I  strive  to  be  near  it  — 
The  innermost  fold  of  thy  spirit  — 
Is  as  far  from  my  grasp,  is  as  free, 
As  the  stars  from  the  mountain-tops  be, 
As  the  pearl,  in  the  depths  of  the  sea, 

From  the  portionless  king  that  would  wear  it. 


XII 
EDWARD   EVERETT   HALE 


EDWARD    EVERETT  HALE 

THE  life  of  Edward  Everett  Hale  has  about 
it  a  peculiar  interest  as  a  subject  of  study.  The 
youngest  member  of  his  Harvard  class, — that 
of  1839,  — ne  was  a^so  tne  most  distinguished 
among  them  and  finally  outlived  them  all.  Per 
sonal  characteristics  which  marked  him  when  a 
freshman  in  college  kept  him  young  to  the  end 
of  his  days.  When  the  Reverend  Edward  Cum- 
mings  came  to  Dr.  Hale's  assistance  in  the 
South  Congregational  Church,  he  was  surprised 
to  find  practically  no  young  people  in  the  parish, 
and  still  more  surprised  to  know  that  their  pas 
tor  was  ignorant  of  the  fact.  These  parishioners 
were  all  young  when  Dr.  Hale  took  them  in 
charge,  and  to  him  they  had  always  remained 
so,  for  he  had  invested  them  with  his  own  fresh 
and  undying  spirit. 

Probably  no  man  in  America,  except  Beecher, 
aroused  and  stimulated  quite  so  many  minds 
as  Hale,  and  his  personal  popularity  was  un 
bounded.  He  had  strokes  of  genius,  sometimes 
with  unsatisfying  results ;  yet  failures  never 
stood  in  his  way,  but  seemed  to  drop  from  his 
memory  in  a  few  hours.  An  unsurpassable 


160  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

model  in  most  respects,  there  were  limitations 
which  made  him  in  some  minor  ways  a  less 
trustworthy  example.  Such  and  so  curiously 
composed  was  Edward  Everett  Hale.  He  was 
the  second  son  of  a  large  family  of  sons  and 
daughters,  his  parents  being  Nathan  and  Sa 
rah  Preston  (Everett)  Hale,  and  he  was  born  in 
Boston,  April  3,  1822.  His  father  was  the  editor 
of  the  leading  newspaper  in  Boston,  the  "  Daily 
Advertiser, "and  most  of  his  children  developed, 
in  one  way  or  another,  distinct  literary  tastes. 
The  subject  of  this  sketch  had  before  him,  as 
a  literary  example  and  influence,  the  celebrated 
statesman  and  orator  whose  name  he  bore,  and 
who  was  his  mother's  brother. 

My  own  recollections  of  him  begin  quite 
early.  Nearly  two  years  younger  than  he,  I  was, 
like  him,  the  youngest  of  my  Harvard  class, 
which  was  two  years  later  than  his.  My  college 
remembrances  of  him  are  vivid  and  character 
istic.  Living  outside  of  the  college  yard,  I  was 
sometimes  very  nearly  late  for  morning  prayers ; 
and  more  than  once  on  such  occasions,  as  I 
passed  beneath  the  walls  of  Massachusetts 
Hall,  then  a  dormitory,  there  would  spring 
from  the  doorway  a  tall,  slim  young  student 
who  had,  according  to  current  report  among 
the  freshmen,  sprung  out  of  bed  almost  at  the 
last  stroke  of  the  bell,  thrown  his  clothes  over 


EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  161 

the  stairway,  and  jumped  into  them  on  the 
way  down.  This  was  Edward  Everett  Hale; 
and  this  early  vision  was  brought  to  my  mind 
not  infrequently  in  later  life  by  his  way  of 
doing  maturer  things. 

The  same  qualities  which  marked  his  per 
sonal  appearance  marked  his  career.  He  was 
always  ready  for  action,  never  stopped  for  tri 
fles,  always  lacked  but  little  of  being  one  of  the 
heroes  or  men  of  genius  of  his  time.  Nor  can 
any  one  yet  predict  which  of  these  will  be  the 
form  finally  taken  by  his  fame.  His  capacity  for 
work  was  unlimited,  and  he  perhaps  belonged 
to  more  societies  and  committees  than  any  man 
living.  In  this  field  his  exhaustless  energy  had 
play,  but  his  impetuous  temperament  often 
proved  a  drawback,  and  brought  upon  him  the 
criticism  of  men  of  less  talent  but  more  accu 
rate  habits  of  mind.  No  denominational  bar 
riers  existed  for  him.  Ready  to  officiate  in  all 
pulpits  and  welcome  in  all,  he  left  it  unknown 
to  the  end  of  his  life  whether  he  did  or  did  not 
believe  in  the  Bible  miracles,  for  instance.  Nor 
did  anybody  who  talked  with  him  care  much. 
His  peculiar  and  attractive  personality  made 
him  acceptable  to  all  sorts  of  people  and  to  men 
of  all  creeds ;  for  his  extraordinary  versatility 
enabled  him  in  his  intercourse  with  other  minds 
to  adapt  his  sympathy  and  his  language  to  the 


162  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

individual  modes  of  thought  and  belief  of  each 
and  all  of  them. 

Some  of  his  finest  literary  achievements  were 
those  which  he  himself  had  forgotten.  Up  to 
the  last  degree  prolific,  he  left  more  than  one 
absolutely  triumphant  stroke  behind  him  in 
literature.  The  best  bit  of  prose  that  I  can  pos 
sibly  associate  with  him  was  a  sketch  in  a  news 
paper  bearing  the  somewhat  meaningless  title 
"The  Last  Shake,"  suggested  by  watching  the 
withdrawal  of  the  last  man  with  a  hand-cart 
who  was  ever  allowed  to  shake  carpets  on  Bos 
ton  Common.  He  was,  no  doubt,  a  dusty  and 
forlorn  figure  enough.  But  to  Hale's  ready  im 
agination  he  stood  for  a  whole  epoch  of  history, 
for  the  long  procession  of  carpet-shakers  who 
were  doing  their  duty  there  when  Percy  marched 
to  Lexington,  or  when  the  cannonade  from 
Breed's  Hill  was  in  the  air.  Summer  and  winter 
had  come  and  gone,  sons  had  succeeded  their 
fathers  at  their  work,  and  the  beating  of  the 
carpets  had  gone  on,  undrowned  by  the  rising 
city's  roar.  At  last  the  more  fastidious  alder 
men  rebelled,  the  last  shake  was  given,  and  Ed 
ward  Everett  Hale  wrote  its  elegy.  I  suppose 
I  kept  the  little  newspaper  cutting  on  my  desk 
for  five  years,  as  a  model  of  what  wit  and  sympa 
thy  could  extract  from  the  humblest  theme. 

Another  stroke  was  of  quite  a  different  char- 


EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  163 

acter.  Out  of  the  myriad  translations  of  Homer, 
there  is  in  all  English  literature  but  one  version 
known  to  me  of  even  a  single  passage  which 
gives  in  a  high  degree  the  Homeric  flavor. 
That  passage  is  the  description  of  the  Descent 
of  Neptune  (Iliad,  Book  XIII),  and  was  pre 
served  in  Hale's  handwriting  by  his  friend 
Samuel  Longfellow,  with  whom  I  edited  the 
book  "  Thalatta,"  —  a  collection  of  sea  poems. 
His  classmate,  Hale,  had  given  it  to  him  when 
first  written,  and  then  had  forgotten  all  about  it. 
Had  it  not  been  printed  by  us  there,  it  might, 
sooner  or  later,  have  found  its  way  into  that  still 
unpublished  magazine  which  Hale  and  I  planned 
together,  when  we  lived  near  each  other  in 
Worcester,  Massachusetts,  —  a  periodical  which 
was  to  have  been  called  the  "  Unfortunates' 
Magazine,"  and  was  to  contain  all  the  prose  and 
verse  sent  to  us  by  neighbors  or  strangers  with 
request  to  get  it  published.  I  remember  that 
we  made  out  a  title-page  between  us,  with  a 
table  of  contents,  all  genuine,  for  the  imagi 
nary  first  number.  Such  a  book  was  to  some 
extent  made  real  in  "Thalatta,"  and  the  follow 
ing  is  Hale's  brilliant  Homeric  translation:  — 

THE   DESCENT   OF   NEPTUNE 

There  sat  he  high  retired  from  the  seas  ; 
There  looked  with  pity  on  his  Grecians  beaten  ; 


164  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

There  burned  with  rage  at  the  God-king  who  slew 
them. 

Then  rushed  he  forward  from  the  rugged  mountain ; 

He  beat  the  forest  also  as  he  came  downward, 

And  the  high  cliffs  shook  underneath  his  footsteps  ; 

Three  times  he  trod,  his  fourth  step  reached  his  sea- 
home. 

There  was  his  palace  in  the  deep  sea-water, 
Shining  with  gold  and  builded  firm  forever ; 
And  there  he  yoked  him  his  swift-footed  horses 
(Their  hoofs  are  brazen,  and  theirmanes  are  golden) 
With  golden  thongs  ;  his  golden  goad  he  seizes  ; 
He  mounts  upon  his  chariot  and  doth  fly ; 
Yea,  drives  he  forth  his  steeds  into  the  billows. 

The  sea-beasts  from  the  depths  rise  under  him  — 
They  know  their  King :  and  the  glad  sea  is  parted, 
That  so  his  wheels  may  fly  along  unhinder'd. 
Dry  speeds  between  the  waves  his  brazen  axle  :  — 
So  bounding  fast  they  bring  him  to  his  Grecians. 

Earlier  than  this,  in  his  racy  papers  called 
"  My  College  Days,"  we  get  another  character 
istic  glimpse  of  Hale  as  a  student.  The  Sunday 
afternoon  before  being  examined  for  admission 
to  college,  he  reports  that  he  read  the  first  six 
books  of  the  ^Eneid  (the  last  six  having  already 
been  mastered)  at  one  fell  swoop, — seated  mean 
time  on  the  ridge-pole  of  his  father's  house ! 

More  firmly  than  on  any  of  these  productions 


EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  165 

Hale's  literary  fame  now  rests  on  an  anony 
mous  study  in  the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  called 
"The  Man  without  a  Country,"  a  sketch  of 
such  absolutely  lifelike  vigor  that  I,  reading  it 
in  camp  during  the  Civil  War,  accepted  it  as 
an  absolutely  true  narrative,  until  I  suddenly 
came  across,  in  the  very  midst  of  it,  a  phrase  so 
wholly  characteristic  of  its  author  that  I  sprang 
from  my  seat,  exclaiming  "  Aut  Ccesar  aut  nul- 
lus;  Edward  Hale  or  nobody."  This  is  the  story 
on  which  the  late  eminent  critic,  Wendell  P. 
Garrison,  of  the  "Nation,"  once  wrote  (April 
17,  1902),  "There  are  some  who  look  upon  it 
as  the  primer  of  Jingoism,"  and  he  wrote  to  me 
ten  years  earlier,  February  19,  1892,  "What 
will  last  of  Hale,  I  apprehend,  will  be  the  phrase 
'A  man  without  a  country,'  and  perhaps  the 
immoral  doctrine  taught  in  it  which  leads  to 
Mexican  and  Chilean  wars  — '  My  country,  right 
or  wrong.' ' 

Be  this  as  it  may,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
on  this  field  Hale's  permanent  literary  fame 
was  won.  It  hangs  to  that  as  securely  as  does 
the  memory  of  Dr.  Holmes  to  his  "Chambered 
Nautilus."  It  is  the  exiled  hero  of  this  story 
who  gives  that  striking  bit  of  advice  to  boys  : 
"And  if  you  are  ever  tempted  to  say  a  word  or 
do  a  thing  that  shall  put  a  bar  between  you  and 
your  family,  your  home  and  your  country,  pray 


166  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

God  in  his   mercy  to   take  you   that   instant 
home  to  his  own  heaven!" 

President  James  Walker,  always  the  keenest 
of  observers,  once  said  of  Hale  that  he  took 
sides  upon  every  question  while  it  was  being 
stated.  This  doubtless  came,  in  part  at  least, 
from  his  having  been  reared  in  a  newspaper 
office,  or,  as  he  said  more  tersely,  having  been 
"cradled  in  the  sheets  of  the  *  Advertiser,' " 
and  bred  to  strike  promptly.  His  strongest  and 
weakest  points  seem  to  have  been  developed  in 
his  father's  editorial  office.  Always  ready  to 
give  unselfish  sympathy,  he  could  not  always 
dispense  deliberate  justice.  One  of  his  favorite 
sayings  was  that  his  ideal  of  a  committee  was 
one  which  consisted  of  three  persons,  one  of 
whom  should  be  in  bed  with  chronic  illness, 
another  should  be  in  Europe,  and  he  himself 
should  be  the  third.  It  was  one  of  his  theories 
that  clergymen  were  made  to  do  small  duties 
neglected  by  others,  and  he  did  them  at  a  for 
midable  sacrifice  of  time  and  in  his  own  inde 
pendent  and  quite  ungovernable  way.  Taking 
active  part  for  the  Nation  during  the  Civil  War, 
—  so  active  that  his  likeness  appears  on  the 
Soldiers'  Monument  on  Boston  Common,  —  he 
did  not  actually  go  to  the  war  itself  as  chaplain 
of  a  regiment,  as  some  of  his  friends  desired ; 
for  they  justly  considered  him  one  of  the  few 


EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  167 

men  qualified  to  fill  that  position  heartily, 
through  his  powerful  voice,  ready  sympathy, 
and  boundless  willingness  to  make  himself  use 
ful  in  every  direction. 

A  very  characteristic  side  of  the  man  might 
always  be  seen  in  his  letters.  The  following 
was  written  in  his  own  hurried  handwriting  in 
recognition  of  his  seventy-seventh  birthday  :  — 

April  8,  '99. 

DEAR  HIGGINSON,  —  Thanks  for  your  card.  It 
awaited  me  on  my  return  from  North  Carolina  last 
night. 

Three  score  &  ten  as  you  know,  has  many  ad 
vantages,  —  and  as  yet,  I  find  no  drawbacks. 

Asa  Gray  said  to  me  "  It  is  great  fun  to  be  70 
years  old.  You  do  not  have  to  know  everything  !  " 

I  see  that  you  can  write  intelligibly. 

I  wish  I  could  —  But  I  cannot  run  a  Typewriter 
more  than  a  Sewing-Machine. 

Will  the  next  generation  learn  to  write  —  any 
more  than  learn  the  alphabet  ? 

With  Love  to  all  yours 

Truly  &  always         E  E  HALE. 

•  This  next  letter  was  called  out  by  the  death 
of  Major-General  Rufus  Saxton,  distinguished 
for  his  first  arming  of  the  freed  slaves  :  — 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C.,  Feb.  29,  1908. 
DEAR  HIGGINSON,  —  I  have  been  reading  with  the 
greatest  interest  your  article  on  Gen.  Saxton. 


i68  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

It  has  reminded  me  of  an  incident  here  —  the 
time  of  which  I  cannot  place.  But  I  think  you  can  ; 
—  and  if  you  can  I  wish  you  would  write  &  tell  me 
when  it  happened  —  and  perhaps  what  came  of  it. 

I  was  coming  up  in  a  street  [car]  when  Charles 
Sumner  came  in  &  took  a  seat  opposite  me  —  The 
car  was  not  crowded. 

Every  one  knew  him,  and  he  really  addressed 
the  whole  car  —  though  he  affected  to  speak  to  me. 
But  he  meant  to  have  every  one  hear — &  they 
did.  He  said  substantially  this,  — 

"  The  most  important  order  since  the  war  began 
has  been  issued  at  the  War  Department  this  morn 
ing. 

"  Directions  have  been  given  for  the  manufac 
ture  of  a  thousand  pair  of  Red  Breeches.  They  are  to 
be  patterned  on  the  Red  Trousers  of  the  Zouaves  — 
and  are  to  be  the  uniform  of  the  First  Negro  Regi 
ment."  He  surprised  the  car — (as  he  meant  to). 

Now,  i.  I  cannot  fix  the  date,  can  you  ? 

2.  Were  the  negro  troops  or  any  regiment  of 
them  ever  clothed  in  the  Zouave  Uniform  ? 

I  remember  there  was  a  "  Zouave  "  Regiment 
from  New  York  City  — 

[I  had  the  pleasure  of  informing  him  that  my 
regiment,  which  he  mentions,  had  been  the  only 
one  disfigured  by  the  scarlet  trousers,  which  were 
fortunately  very  soon  worn  out  and  gladly  banished. 
This  was  in  August,  1862.] 

It  may  be  well  enough  to  end  these  extracts 
from  his  correspondence  with  one  of  those  bits 


EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  169 

of  pure  nonsense  in  which  his  impetuous  nature 
delighted.  This  was  on  occasion  of  his  joining 
the  Boston  Authors'  Club  :  — 

ROXBURY,  Mass.,  April  10,  1903. 

DEAR  HIGGINSON,  —  One  sometimes  does  what 
there  is  no  need  of  doing.  What  we  call  here  a 
Duke  of  Northumberland  day  is  a  day  when  one 
does  what  he  darn  chooses  to  do,  without  refer 
ence  to  the  obligations  of  the  social  order.  Such  is 
to-day. 

Did  you  ever  hear  the  story  of  the  graduate  who 
never  advanced  in  his  studies  farther  than  that 
Pythagorean  man  did  who  never  could  learn  more 
than  the  first  letters  of  the  alphabet?  I  am  re 
minded  of  it  by  the  elegant  monogram  of  our 
Club. 

This  young  fellow's  friends  were  very  eager  to 
get  him  through  the  university,  so  they  sent  him 
out  from  Boston  in  a 

CAB 

After  two  days  he  came 

BAG 

He  then  went  to  Cambridge  on  a  three  years' 
course  by  taking  electives  which  did  n't  require 
him  to  repeat  the  alphabet. 

He  learned  to  smoke 

B     A     C     C     A 

and  at  the  end  of  the  time  the  College  made  him 
A     B 

His  friends  then  sent  him  to  the  Cuban  War,  and 


i;o  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

he  came  out  a  Field  Marshal,  so  that  he  was  able  to 
become  a  member  of  the 

A     B     C     F     M 

This  was  all  I  knew  about  him  till  this  morning 
I  have  learned  that  after  publishing  his  military 
memoirs  he  became  a  member  of  the 

BAG 

[Boston  Authors'  Club] 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  he  already  drank  the 
Lager  which  was  furnished  him  by  the  AMER 
ICAN  BOTTLING  COMPANY 

So  no  more  at  present  from  your  old  companion 
in  arms, 

EDWARD  E  HALE 
A  B  1839. 

These  letters  give  a  glimpse  at  the  more  im 
petuous  and  sunny  aspects  of  his  life.  Turning 
again  to  its  severer  duties,  it  is  interesting  to 
notice  that  in  conducting  the  funeral  services 
of  Mr.  F.  A.  Hill,  the  Secretary  of  the  State 
Board  of  Education,  Dr.  Hale  said  in  warm 
praise  of  that  able  man:  "He  lived  by  the 
spirit ;  I  do  not  think  he  cared  for  method." 
The  same  was  Hale's  own  theory  also,  or,  at 
any  rate,  his  familiar  practice.  He  believed,  for 
instance,  that  the  school  hours  of  a  city  should 
be  very  much  shortened,  yet  never  made  it 
clear  what  pursuits  should  take  their  places ; 
for  it  was  the  habit  of  his  fertile  brain  to  for- 


EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  171 

mulate  schemes  and  allow  others  to  work  them 
out.  Many  of  his  suggestions  fell  to  the  ground, 
but  others  bore  rich  fruit.  Among  these  lat 
ter  are  the  various  "  Lend  a  Hand  "  clubs  which 
have  sprung  up  all  over  the  country,  not  con 
fining  themselves  to  sect  or  creed,  and  hav 
ing  as  their  motto  a  brief  verse  of  his  writing. 
He  went  to  no  divinity  school  to  prepare  him 
self  for  preaching,  and  at  one  time  did  not 
see  clearly  the  necessity  of  preliminary  training 
for  those  who  were  to  enter  the  pulpit.  If  his 
friends  undertook  laboriously  to  correct  any 
inaccuracies  in  his  published  writings,  he  took 
every  such  correction  with  imperturbable  and 
sunny  equanimity,  and,  taxed  with  error,  readily 
admitted  it.  His  undeniable  habit  of  rather 
hasty  and  inaccurate  statement  sprang  from  his 
way  of  using  facts  simply  as  illustrations.  They 
served  to  prove  his  point  or  exemplify  the  prin 
ciple  for  which  he  was  contending.  To  verify 
his  statements  would  often  have  taken  too  much 
time,  and  from  his  point  of  view  was  imma 
terial.  It  is  hard  for  the  academic  mind,  with 
its  love  of  system,  to  accept  this  method  of 
working,  and  his  contemporaries  sometimes 
regretted  that  he  could  not  act  with  them  in 
more  business-like  ways.  They  were  tempted 
to  compare  his  aims  and  methods  to  those  of 
Eskimo  dogs,  each  of  which  has  to  be  har- 


172  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE 

nessed  separately  to  the  sledge  which  bears  the 
driver,  or  else  they  turn  and  eat  each  other  up. 
When  it  came  to  the  point,  all  of  yesterday's 
shortcomings  were  forgotten  next  morning  by 
him  and  every  one  else,  in  his  readiness  to  be 
the  world's  errand-boy  for  little  kindnesses. 
But  in  the  presence,  we  will  not  say  of  death, 
but  of  a  life  lived  for  others,  which  is  death 
less,  the  critic's  task  seems  ungenerous  and 
unmeaning.  This  man's  busy  existence  may 
not  always  have  run  in  the  accepted  grooves, 
but  its  prevailing  note  was  Love.  If  the  rushing 
stream  sometimes  broke  down  the  barriers  of 
safety,  it  proved  more  often  a  fertilizing  Nile 
than  a  dangerous  Mississippi. 

Followed  and  imitated  by  multitudes,  justly 
beloved  for  his  warmth  of  heart  and  readiness 
of  hand,  he  had  a  happy  and  busy  life,  sure  to 
win  gratitude  and  affection  when  it  ended,  as  it 
did  at  Roxbury  on  June  10,  1909.  The  children 
and  the  aged  loved  him  almost  to  worshiping, 
and  is  there,  after  all,  a  better  test? 


XIII 

A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL, 

RUFUS  SAXTON 


A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL, 
RUFUS  SAXTON 

COMPLAINT  has  sometimes  been  made  of 
Massachusetts  that  the  state  did  not  provide  a 
sufficient  number  of  officers  of  high  grade  for 
the  regular  army  during  the  Civil  War.  Be  that 
as  it  may,  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  such  officers 
has  just  died,  being  indeed  one  whose  actual  fame 
may  yet  outlast  that  of  all  the  others  by  reason 
of  its  rare  mingling  of  civil  and  military  service. 

General  Rufus  Saxtpn  was  born  at  Greenfield, 
Massachusetts,  on  October  19,  1824,  graduated 
at  the  military  academy  in  1 849,  was  made  brevet 
second  lieutenant,  Third  United  States  Artil 
lery,  July  i,  1849,  second  lieutenant,  Fourth 
Artillery,  September  12,  1850,  and  captain  and 
assistant  quartermaster,  May  13,  1861.  He  was 
chief  quartermaster  on  the  staff  of  General  Lyon 
in  Missouri  and  subsequently  on  that  of  General 
McClellan  in  western  Virginia,  and  was  on  the 
expeditionary  corps  to  Port  Royal,  South  Caro 
lina.  In  May  and  June,  1862,  he  was  ordered 
north  and  placed  in  command  of  the  defenses 
at  Harper's  Ferry,  where  his  services  won  him 
a  medal  of  honor;  after  which  he  was  military 


176        A   MASSACHUSETTS    GENERAL 

governor  of  the  Department  of  the  South,  his 
headquarters  being  at  Beaufort,  South  Carolina; 
this  service  extended  from  July,  1862,  to  May 
1 8,  1865,  when  he  rose  to  be  colonel  and  brevet 
brigadier-general  of  volunteers.  He  was  mus 
tered  out  of  the  volunteer  service  January  15, 
1866,  but  rose  finally  to  be  colonel  and  assist 
ant  quartermaster-general  in  the  regular  army, 
March  10,  1882.  He  retired  from  active  service 
October  19,  1888,  having  been  made  on  that 
date  a  brigadier-general  on  the  retired  list.  This 
is  the  brief  summary  of  what  was,  in  reality,  a 
quite  unique  career. 

The  portion  of  this  honorable  life  upon  which 
his  personal  fame  will  doubtless  be  founded  is 
that  from  1862  to  1865,  when  he  was  military 
governor  of  the  Department  of  the  South.  In 
this  capacity  he  first  proved  possible  the  distri 
bution  of  the  vast  body  of  free  or  fugitive  slaves 
over  the  Sea  Islands,  which  had  been  almost 
deserted  by  their  white  predecessors.  This  feat 
was  accompanied  by  what  was  probably  in  the 
end  even  more  important, — the  creation  of  black 
troops  from  that  centre.  The  leadership  in  this 
work  might  have  belonged  under  other  circum 
stances  to  Major-General  Hunter,  of  Washing 
ton,  District  of  Columbia,  who  had  undertaken 
such  a  task  in  the  same  region  (May  3,  1862); 
but  General  Hunter,  though  he  had  many  fine 


A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL         177 

qualities,  was  a  thoroughly  impetuous  man ; 
whimsical,  changeable,  and  easily  influenced  by 
his  staff  officers,  few  of  whom  had  the  slightest 
faith  in  the  enterprise.  He  acted,  moreover, 
without  authority  from  Washington,  and  his 
whole  enterprise  had  been  soon  disallowed  by 
the  United  States  government.  This  was  the 
position  of  things  when  General  Saxton,  avail 
ing  himself  of  the  fact  that  one  company  of  this 
Hunter  regiment  had  not,  like  the  rest,  been 
practically  disbanded,  made  that  the  basis  of  a 
reorganization  of  it  under  the  same  name  (First 
South  Carolina  Infantry).  This  was  done  under 
express  authority  from  the  War  Department, 
dated  August  25,  1862,  with  the  hope  of  making 
it  a  pioneer  of  a  whole  subsequent  series  of  slave 
regiments,  as  it  was.  The  fact  that  General  Sax- 
ton  was  a  Massachusetts  man,  as  was  the  colonel 
whom  he  put  in  charge  of  the  first  regiment, 
—  and  as  were,  indeed,  most  of  the  men  promi 
nent  from  beginning  to  end  in  the  enlistment 
of  colored  troops,  —  gave  an  unquestioned  pri 
ority  in  the  matter  to  that  state. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  this  was  long 
before  Governor  Andrew  had  received  permis 
sion  to  recruit  a  colored  regiment,  the  Fifty- 
Fourth  Massachusetts,  whose  first  colonel  was 
Robert  Gould  Shaw,  a  young  hero  of  Boston 
birth.  The  fact  that  this  was  the  first  black  regi- 


i;8         A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL 

ment  enlisted  at  the  North  has  left  a  general 
impression  in  Massachusetts  that  it  was  the 
first  colored  regiment ;  but  this  is  an  error  of 
five  months,  General  Saxton's  authority  having 
been  dated  August  25,  1862,  and  that  of  Gov 
ernor  Andrew  January  26,  1863.  The  whole 
number  of  black  soldiers  enlisted  during  the  war 
was  178,975  (Heitman's  "Historical  Register," 
page  890),  whose  whole  organization  may  fairly 
be  attributed,  in  a  general  way,  to  the  success 
of  General  Saxton's  undertaking.  In  making 
this  claim,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
enlistments  made  by  General  Butler  at  almost 
precisely  the  same  time  in  New  Orleans  con 
sisted  mainly  of  a  quite  exceptional  class,  the 
comparatively  educated  free  colored  men  of 
that  region,  the  darkest  of  these  being,  as  Gen 
eral  Butler  himself  once  said,  "of  about  the 
same  complexion  as  the  late  Daniel  Webster." 
Those  New  Orleans  regiments  would  hardly 
have  led  to  organizing  similar  troops  else 
where,  for  want  of  similar  material.  Be  this  as 
it  may,  the  fact  is  that  these  South  Carolina 
regiments,  after  their  number  was  increased  by 
other  colored  regiments  from  various  sources, 
were  unquestionably  those  who  held  the  South 
Carolina  coast,  making  it  possible  for  Sherman 
to  lead  his  final  march  to  the  sea  and  thus  prac 
tically  end  the  war.  As  an  outcome  of  all  this, 


A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL         179 

General  Saxton's  name  is  quite  sure  to  be  long 
remembered. 

It  is  fair  now  to  recognize  the  fact  that  this 
combination  of  civil  and  military  authority  was 
not  always  what  Saxton  himself  would  have 
selected.  There  were  times  when  he  chafed 
under  what  seemed  to  him,  a  non-military  work 
and  longed  for  the  open  field.  It  is  perhaps  char 
acteristic  of  his  temperament,  however,  that  at 
the  outset  he  preferred  to  be  where  the  great 
est  obstacles  were  to  be  encountered,  and  this 
he  certainly  achieved.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  early  organizers  and  officers  of  the 
colored  troops  fought  in  a  manner  with  ropes 
around  their  necks,  both  they  and  their  black 
recruits  having  been  expressly  denied  by  the 
Confederate  government  the  usual  privileges  of 
soldiers.  They  had  also  to  encounter  for  a 
long  time  the  disapproval  of  many  officers  of 
high  rank  in  the  Union  army,  both  regular 
and  volunteer,  this  often  leading  to  a  grudg 
ing  bestowal  of  supplies  (especially,  strange  to 
say,  of  medical  ones),  and  to  a  disproportionate 
share  of  fatigue  duty.  This  was  hard  indeed 
for  Saxton  to  bear,  and  was  increased  in  his 
case  by  the  fact  that  he  had  been  almost  the 
only  cadet  in  his  time  at  West  Point  who  was 
strong  in  anti-slavery  feeling,  and  who  thus 
began  with  antagonisms  which  lasted  into  actual 


i8o         A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL 

service.  To  these  things  he  was  perhaps  over 
sensitive,  and  he  had  to  be  defended  against  this 
tendency,  as  he  was,  by  an  admirable  wife  and 
by  an  invaluable  staff  officer  and  housemate, 
Brevet  Major  Edward  W.  Hooper,  of  Massachu 
setts,  who  was  his  volunteer  aide-de-camp  and 
housemate.  The  latter  was,  as  many  Bostonians 
will  remember,  of  splendid  executive  ability, 
as  shown  by  his  long  subsequent  service  as 
steward  and  treasurer  of  Harvard  University ; 
a  man  of  rare  organizing  power,  and  of  a  cheer 
fulness  which  made  him  only  laugh  away  dozens 
of  grievances  that  vexed  General  Saxton. 

As  an  organizer  of  troops  General  Saxton's 
standard  was  very  high,  and  he  assumed,  as 
was  proper,  that  a  regiment  made  out  of  former 
slaves  should  not  merely  follow  good  moral  ex 
amples,  but  set  them.  As  all  men  in  that  day 
knew,  there  was  a  formidable  variation  in  this 
respect  in  different  regiments,  some  of  the  vol 
unteer  officers  whose  military  standard  was  the 
highest  being  the  lowest  in  their  personal  habits. 
General  Saxton  would  issue  special  orders  from 
time  to  time  to  maintain  a  high  tone  morally  in 
the  camp,  as  he  did,  indeed,  in  the  whole  region 
under  his  command.  He  was  never  in  entire 
harmony  with  General  Gillmore,  the  military 
commander  of  the  department,  whose  interest 
was  thought  to  lie  chiefly  in  the  artillery  ser- 


A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL        181 

vice ;  and  while  very  zealous  and  efficient  in 
organizing  special  expeditions  for  his  own  par 
ticular  regiments,  Saxton  kept  up,  as  we  thought 
at  the  time,  a  caution  beyond  what  was  neces 
sary  in  protecting  the  few  colored  regiments 
which  he  had  personally  organized.  When  the 
Florida  expedition  was  planned,  which  resulted 
in  the  sanguinary  defeat  at  Olustee,  he  heartily 
disapproved  of  the  whole  affair.  This  he  carried 
so  far  that  when  my  own  regiment  was  ordered 
on  the  expedition,  as  we  all  greatly  desired, 
when  we  had  actually  broken  camp  and  marched 
down  to  the  wharf  for  embarkment  in  high  ex 
ultation,  we  were  stopped  and  turned  back  by 
an  order,  just  obtained  by  General  Saxton  from 
headquarters,  countermanding  our  march  and 
sending  us  back  to  pitch  our  tents  again.  It 
was  not  until  some  days  later  had  brought  the 
news  of  the  disastrous  battle,  and  how  defective 
was  the  judgment  of  those  who  planned  it,  that 
General  Saxton  found  himself  vindicated  in  our 
eyes.  The  plain  reason  for  that  defeat  was  that 
the  Confederates,  being  on  the  mainland  and 
having  railway  communications,  such  as  they 
were,  could  easily  double  from  the  interior  any 
force  sent  round  by  water  outside.  This  was 
just  what  had  been  pointed  out  beforehand  by 
General  Saxton,  but  his  judgment  had  been 
overruled. 


182        A  MASSACHUSETTS  GENERAL 

General  Saxton  was  a  man  of  fine  military 
bearing  and  a  most  kindly  and  agreeable  face. 
Social  in  his  habits,  he  was  able  to  go  about 
freely  for  the  rest  of  his  life  in  the  pleasant 
circle  of  retired  military  men  and  their  families 
in  Washington.  He  and  his  wife  had  always  the 
dream  of  retiring  from  the  greater  gayety  of  the 
national  metropolis  to  his  birthplace  at  Deer- 
field,  Massachusetts.  Going  there  one  beauti 
ful  day  in  early  summer,  with  that  thought  in 
mind,  they  sat,  so  he  told  me,  on  the  peaceful 
piazza  all  the  morning  and  looked  out  down 
the  avenue  of  magnificent  elms  which  shade 
that  most  picturesque  of  village  streets.  Dur 
ing  the  whole  morning  no  wheels  passed  their 
place,  except  those  belonging  to  a  single  coun 
try  farmer's  wagon.  Finding  the  solitude  to 
be  somewhat  of  a  change  after  the  vivacity 
of  Washington,  they  decided  to  go  down  to 
Greenfield  and  pass  the  afternoon.  There  they 
sat  on  a  hotel  piazza  under  somewhat  similar  cir 
cumstances  and  saw  only  farmers'  wagons,  two 
or  three.  Disappointed  in  the  recpnnoissance, 
they  went  back  to  Washington,  and  spent  the 
rest  of  their  days  amid  a  happy  and  congenial 
circle  of  friends.  He  died  there  February  23, 
1908.  To  the  present  writer,  at  least,  the  world 
seems  unquestionably  more  vacant  that  Saxton 
•  is  gone. 


XIV 
ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN 


ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN 

SOME  years  since,  there  passed  away,  at  New 
port,  Rhode  Island,  one  who  could  justly  be 
classed  with  Thackeray's  women  ;  one  in  whom 
Lady  Kew  would  have  taken  delight ;  one  in 
whom  she  would  have  found  wit  and  memory 
and  audacity  rivaling  her  own  ;  one  who  was  at 
once  old  and  young,  poor  and  luxurious,  one  of 
the  loneliest  of  human  beings,  and  yet  one  of 
the  most  sociable.  Miss  Jane  Stuart,  the  only 
surviving  daughter  of  Gilbert  Stuart,  the  painter, 
had  dwelt  all  her  life  on  the  edge  of  art  without 
being  an  artist,  and  at  the  brink  of  fashion 
without  being  fashionable.  Living  at  times  in 
something  that  approached  poverty,  she  was 
usually  surrounded  by  friends  who  were  rich 
and  generous ;  so  that  she  often  fulfilled  Mot 
ley's  famous  early  saying,  that  one  could  do 
without  the  necessaries  of  life,  but  could  not 
spare  the  luxuries.  She  was  an  essential  part  of 
the  atmosphere  of  Newport ;  living  near  the 
"Old  Stone  Mill,"  she  divided  its  celebrity 
and,  as  all  agreed,  its  doubtful  antiquity ;  for 
her  most  intimate  friends  could  not  really  guess 
within  fifteen  years  how  old  she  was,  and 


i86       ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN 

strangers  placed  her  anywhere  from  sixty  to 
eighty.  Her  modest  cottage,  full  of  old  furni 
ture  and  pictures,  was  the  resort  of  much  that 
was  fashionable  on  the  days  of  her  weekly 
receptions ;  costly  equipages  might  be  seen 
before  the  door ;  and  if,  during  any  particular 
season,  she  suspected  a  falling  off  in  visitors, 
she  would  try  some  new  device,  —  a  beautiful 
girl  sitting  in  a  certain  carved  armchair  beneath 
an  emblazoned  window,  like  Keats's  Madeline, 
—  or,  when  things  grew  desperate,  a  bench 
with  a  milk-pan  and  a  pumpkin  on  the  piazza, 
to  give  an  innocently  rural  air.  "My  dear,"  she 
said  on  that  occasion,  "  I  must  try  something  : 
rusticity  is  the  dodge  for  me" ;  and  so  the  piazza 
looked  that  summer  like  a  transformation  scene 
in  "Cinderella,"  with  the  fairy  godmother  not 
far  off. 

She  inherited  from  her  father  in  full  the 
Bohemian  temperament,  and  cultivated  it  so 
habitually  through  life  that  it  was  in  full  flower 
at  a  time  when  almost  any  other  woman  would 
have  been  repressed  by  age,  poverty,  and  lone 
liness.  At  seventy  or  more  she  was  still  a  born 
mistress  of  the  revels,  and  could  not  be  for  five 
minutes  in  a  house  where  a  charade  or  a  mask 
was  going  on  without  tapping  at  the  most  pri 
vate  door  and  plaintively  imploring  to  be  taken 
in  as  one  of  the  conspirators.  Once  in,  there 


ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN        187 

was  nothing  too  daring,  too  grotesque,  or  too 
juvenile  for  her  to  accept  as  her  part,  and  suc 
cessfully.  In  the  modest  winter  sports  of  the 
narrowed  Newport  circle,  when  wit  and  ingenu 
ity  had  to  be  invoked  to  replace  the  summer 
resources  of  wealth  and  display,  she  was  an  in 
dispensable  factor.  She  had  been  known  to 
enact  a  Proud  Sister  in  "  Cinderella,"  to  be  the 
performer  on  the  penny  whistle  in  the  "  Chil 
dren's  Symphony,"  to  march  as  the  drum  major 
of  the  Ku-Klux  Klan  with  a  muff  for  a  shako, 
and  to  be  the  gorilla  of  a  menagerie,  with  an 
artificial  head.  Nothing  could  make  too  great 
a  demand  upon  her  wit  and  vivacity,  and  her 
very  face  had  a  droll  plainness  more  effective 
for  histrionic  purposes  than  a  Grecian  profile. 
She  never  lost  dignity  in  these  performances, 
for  she  never  had  anything  that  could  exactly 
be  described  by  that  name ;  that  was  not  her 
style.  She  had  in  its  stead  a  supply  of  common 
sense  and  ready  adaptation  that  took  the  place, 
when  needed,  of  all  starched  decorum,  and  quite 
enabled  her  on  serious  occasions  to  hold  her 
own. 

But  her  social  resources  were  not  confined  to 
occasions  where  she  was  one  of  an  extempo 
rized  troupe :  she  was  a  host  in  herself  ;  she  had 
known  everybody ;  her  memory  held  the  adven 
tures  and  scandals  of  a  generation,  and  these 


1 88       ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN 

lost  nothing  on  her  lips.  Then  when  other  re 
sources  were  exhausted,  and  the  candles  had 
burned  down,  and  the  fire  was  low,  and  a  few 
guests  lingered,  somebody  would  be  sure  to  say, 
"  Now,  Miss  Jane,  tell  us  a  ghost  story."  With 
a  little,  a  very  little,  of  coy  reluctance,  she  would 
begin,  in  a  voice  at  first  commonplace,  but  pre 
sently  dropping  to  a  sort  of  mystic  tone ;  she 
seemed  to  undergo  a  change  like  the  gypsy 
queen  in  Browning's  "Flight of  the  Duchess"; 
she  was  no  longer  a  plain,  elderly  woman  in  an 
economical  gown,  but  she  became  a  medium,  a 
solemn  weaver  of  spells  so  deep  that  they  ap 
peared  to  enchant  herself.  Whence  came  her 
stories,  I  wonder  ?  not  ghost  stories  alone,  but 
blood-curdling  murders  and  midnight  terrors,  of 
which  she  abated  you  not  an  item,  —  for  she  was 
never  squeamish,  —  tales  that  all  the  police 
records  could  hardly  match.  Then,  when  she 
and  her  auditors  were  wrought  up  to  the  highest 
pitch,  she  began  to  tell  fortunes  ;  and  here  also 
she  seemed  not  so  much  a  performer  as  one 
performed  upon,  —  a  Delphic  priestess,  a  Cas 
sandra.  I  never  shall  forget  how  she  once  made 
our  blood  run  cold  with  the  visions  of  coming 
danger  that  she  conjured  around  a  young  mar 
ried  woman  on  whom  there  soon  afterwards 
broke  a  wholly  unexpected  scandal  that  left  her 
an  exile  in  a  foreign  land.  No  one  ever  knew,  I 


ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN        189 

believe,  whether  Miss  Stuart  spoke  at  that  time 
with  knowledge ;  perhaps  she  hardly  knew  her 
self  ;  she  always  was,  or  affected  to  be,  carried 
away  beyond  herself  by  these  weird  incanta 
tions. 

She  was  not  so  much  to  be  called  affectionate 
or  lovable  as  good-natured  and  kindly  ;  and  with 
an  undisguised  relish  for  the  comfortable  things 
of  this  world,  and  a  very  frank  liking  for  the 
society  of  the  rich  and  great,  she  was  yet  con 
stant,  after  a  fashion,  to  humbler  friends,  and 
liked  to  do  them  good  turns.  Much  of  her  ami 
ability  took  the  form  of  flattery, —  a  flattery 
so  habitual  that  it  lost  all  its  grossness,  and 
became  almost  a  form  of  good  deeds.  She  was 
sometimes  justly  accused  of  applying  this  to 
the  wealthy  and  influential,  but  it  was  almost  as 
freely  exercised  where  she  had  nothing  to  gain 
by  it ;  and  it  gave  to  the  humblest  the  feeling 
that  he  was  at  least  worth  flattering.  Even  if 
he  had  a  secret  fear  that  what  she  said  of  him 
behind  his  back  might  be  less  encouraging,  no 
matter  :  it  was  something  to  have  been  praised 
to  his  face.  It  must  be  owned  that  her  resources 
in  the  other  direction  were  considerable,  and 
Lord  Steyne  himself  might  have  applauded 
when  she  was  gradually  led  into  mimicking 
some  rich  amateur  who  had  pooh-poohed  her 
pictures,  or  some  intrusive  dame  who  had  pat- 


190        ONE  OF  THACKERAY'S  WOMEN 

ronizingly  inspected  her  humble  cot.  It  could 
not  quite  be  said  of  her  that  her  wit  lived  to 
play,  not  wound;  and  yet,  after  all,  what  she 
got  out  of  life  was  so  moderate,  and  so  many 
women  would  have  found  her  way  of  existence 
dreary  enough,  that  it  was  impossible  to  grudge 
her  these  trifling  indulgences. 

Inheriting  her  father's  love  of  the  brush,  she 
had  little  of  his  talent ;  her  portraits  of  friends 
were  generally  transferred  by  degrees  to  dark 
corners ;  but  there  existed  an  impression  that 
she  was  a  good  copyist  of  Stuart's  pictures,  and 
she  was  at  one  time  a  familiar  figure  in  Boston, 
perched  on  a  high  stool,  and  copying  those  of 
his  works  which  were  transferred  for  safe-keep 
ing  from  Faneuil  Hall  to  the  Art  Museum.  On 
one  occasion,  it  was  said,  she  grew  tired  of  the 
long  process  of  copying  and  took  home  a  canvas 
or  two  with  the  eyes  unpainted,  putting  them 
in,  colored  to  please  her  own  fancy,  at  New 
port.  Perhaps  she  invented  this  legend  for  her 
own  amusement,  for  she  never  spared  herself, 
and,  were  she  to  read  this  poor  sketch  of  her, 
would  object  to  nothing  but  the  tameness  of  its 
outlines. 


XV 
JOHN  BARTLETT 


JOHN  BARTLETT 

IN  every  university  town  such  as  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  there  is  an  outside  circle,  be 
yond  the  institution  itself,  of  cultivated  men 
who  may  or  may  not  hold  its  degrees,  but  who 
contribute  to  the  intellectual  atmosphere.  One 
of  the  most  widely  known  and  generally  useful 
of  these  at  Cambridge  —  whether  in  his  active 
youth  or  in  the  patient  and  lonely  seclusion  of 
his  later  years  —  was  John  Bartlett,  best  known 
as  the  author  of  the  dictionary  entitled  "  Fa 
miliar  Quotations." 

He  was  born  in  Plymouth,  June  14,  1820, 
was  educated  in  the  public  schools  of  that  town, 
and  in  1836  entered  the  bookbinding  establish 
ment  connected  with  the  University  bookstore 
in  Cambridge,  under  John  Owen,  who  was 
Longfellow's  first  publisher.  In  the  next  year 
Bartlett  became  a  clerk  in  the  bookstore,  and 
soon  showed  remarkable  talent  for  the  busi 
ness.  In  1846  Mr.  Owen  failed,  and  Bartlett 
remained  with  his  successor,  George  Nichols, 
but  became  himself  the  proprietor  in  1849.  He 
had  shown  himself  in  this  position  an  uncom 
monly  good  publisher  and  adviser  of  authors. 


194  JOHN  BARTLETT 

He  had  there  published  three  editions  of  his 
"  Familiar  Quotations,"  gradually  enlarging  the 
book  from  the  beginning.  In  1859  ne  s°ld  out 
to  Sever  &  Francis.  In  1862  he  served  as  vol 
unteer  naval  paymaster  for  nine  months  with 
Captain  Boutelle,  his  brother-in-law,  on  board 
Admiral  DuPont's  dispatch-boat.  In  August, 
1863,  he  entered  the  publishing  house  of  Little, 
Brown  &  Co.,  nominally  as  clerk,  but  with  the 
promise  that  in  eighteen  months,  when  the  exist 
ing  partnership  would  end,  he  should  be  taken 
into  the  firm,  which  accordingly  took  place  in 
1865.  The  fourth  edition  of  his  "  Familiar  Quo 
tations,"  always  growing  larger,  had  meanwhile 
been  published  by  them,  as  well  as  an  Edition 
de  luxevi  Walton's  "  Complete  Angler,"  in  the 
preparation  of  which  he  made  an  especial  and 
exceptionally  fine  collection  of  works  on  angling, 
which  he  afterwards  presented  to  the  Harvard 
College  Library.  His  activity  in  the  Walto- 
nian  sport  is  also  commemorated  in  Lowell's 
poem,  "  To  Mr.  John  Bartlett,  who  had  sent  me 
a  seven-pound  trout."  He  gave  to  the  Library 
at  the  same  time  another  collection  of  books 
containing  "Proverbs,"  and  still  another  on 
"Emblems." 

After  his  becoming  partner  in  the  firm,  the 
literary,  manufacturing,  and  advertising  depart 
ments  were  assigned  to  him,  and  were  retained 


JOHN  BARTLETT  195 

until  he  withdrew  altogether.  The  fifth  and 
sixth  editions  of  his  "Quotations"  were  pub 
lished  by  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  the  seventh  and 
eighth  by  Routledge  of  London,  the  ninth  by 
Little,  Brown  &  Co.  and  Macmillan  &  Co.  of 
London,  jointly  ;  and  of  all  these  editions  be 
tween  two  and  three  hundred  thousand  copies 
must  have  been  sold.  Of  the  seventh  and  eighth 
editions,  as  the  author  himself  tells  us,  forty 
thousand  copies  were  printed  apart  from  the 
English  reprint.  The  ninth  edition,  published 
in  1891,  had  three  hundred  and  fifty  pages 
more  than  its  predecessor,  and  the  index  was 
increased  by  more  than  ten  thousand  lines.  In 
1 88 1  Mr.  Bartlett  published  his  Shakespeare 
"  Phrase-Book,"  and  in  February,  1889,  he  re 
tired  from  his  firm  to  complete  his  indispensable 
Shakespeare  "  Concordance,"  which  Macmillan 
&  Co.  published  at  their  own  risk  in  London 
in  1894. 

All  this  immense  literary  work  had  the  direct 
support  and  cooperation  of  Mr.  Bartlett' s  wife, 
who  was  the  daughter  of  Sidney  Willard,  pro 
fessor  of  Hebrew  in  Harvard  University,  and 
granddaughter  of  Joseph  Willard,  President  of 
Harvard  from  1781  to  1804.  She  inherited  from 
such  an  ancestry  the  love  of  studious  labor ; 
and  as  they  had  no  children,  she  and  her  hus 
band  could  pursue  it  with  the  greatest  regular- 


196  JOHN  BARTLETT 

ity.  Both  of  them  had  also  been  great  readers 
for  many  years,  and  there  is  still  extant  a  man 
uscript  book  of  John  Bartlett's  which  surpasses 
most  books  to  be  found  in  these  days,  for 
it  contains  the  life-long  record  of  his  reading. 
What  man  or  woman  now  living,  for  instance, 
can  claim  to  have  read  Gibbon's  "  Decline  and 
Fall "  faithfully  through,  four  times,  from  be 
ginning  to  end  ?  We  must,  however,  remember 
that  this  was  accomplished  by  one  who  began 
by  reading  a  verse  of  the  Bible  aloud  to  his 
mother  when  he  was  but  three  years  old,  and 
had  gone  through  the  whole  of  it  at  nine. 

There  came  an  event  in  Bartlett's  life,  how 
ever,  which  put  an  end  to  all  direct  labors,  when 
his  wife  and  co-worker  began  to  lose  her  mental 
clearness,  and  all  this  joint  task  had  presently 
to  be  laid  aside.  For  a  time  he  tried  to  continue 
his  work  unaided;  and  she,  with  unwearied 
patience  and  gentleness,  would  sit  quietly  be 
side  him  without  interference.  But  the  malady 
increased,  until  she  passed  into  that  melancholy 
condition  described  so  powerfully  by  his  neigh 
bor  and  intimate  friend,  James  Russell  Lowell, 
—  though  drawing  from  a  different  example,  — 
in  his  poem  of  "The  Darkened  Mind,"  one  of 
the  most  impressive,  I  think,  of  his  poems. 
While  Bartlett  still  continued  his  habit  of  read 
ing,  the  writing  had  to  be  surrendered.  His 


JOHN  BARTLETT  197 

eyesight  being  erelong  affected,  the  reading 
also  was  abandoned,  and  after  his  wife's  death 
he  lived  for  a  year  or  two  one  of  the  loneliest 
of  lives.  He  grew  physically  lame,  and  could 
scarcely  cross  the  room  unaided.  A  nervous 
trouble  in  the  head  left  him  able  to  employ  a 
reader  less  and  less  frequently,  and  finally  not 
at  all.  In  a  large  and  homelike  parlor,  containing 
one  of  the  most  charming  private  libraries  in 
Cambridge, — the  books  being  beautifully  bound 
and  lighting  up  the  walls  instead  of  darkening 
them,  —  he  spent  most  of  the  day  reclining  on 
the  sofa,  externally  unemployed,  simply  because 
employment  was  impossible.  He  had  occasional 
visitors,  and  four  of  his  old  friends  formed  what 
they  called  a  "Bartlett  Club,"  meeting  at  his 
house  one  evening  in  every  week.  Sometimes 
days  passed,  however,  without  his  receiving  a 
visitor,  he  living  alone  in  a  room  once  gay  with 
the  whist-parties  which  he  and  Lowell  had  for 
merly  organized  and  carried  on. 

His  cheerful  courage,  however,  was  absolutely 
unbroken,  and  he  came  forward  to  meet  every 
guest  with  a  look  of  sunshine.  His  voice  and 
manner,  always  animated  and  cheerful,  remained 
the  same.  He  had  an  inexhaustible  store  of 
anecdotes  and  reminiscences,  and  could  fill 
the  hour  with  talk  without  showing  exhaustion. 
Seldom  going  out  of  the  house,  unable  to  take 


198  JOHN  BARTLETT 

more  than  very  short  drives,  he  dwelt  absolutely 
in  the  past,  remembered  the  ways  and  deeds  of 
all  Cambridge  and  Boston  literary  men,  speaking 
genially  of  all  and  with  malice  of  none.  He  had 
an  endless  fund  of  good  stories  of  personal  expe 
rience.  Were  one  to  speak  to  him,  for  instance, 
of  Edward  Everett,  well  known  for  the  elabo 
ration  with  which  he  prepared  his  addresses, 
Bartlett  would  instantly  recall  how  Everett 
once  came  into  his  bookstore  in  search  of  a 
small  pocket  Bible  to  be  produced  dramatically 
before  a  rural  audience  in  a  lecture  ;  but  in  this 
case  finding  none  small  enough,  he  chose  a 
copy  of  Hoyle's  "Games"  instead,  which  was 
produced  with  due  impressiveness  when  the 
time  came.  Then  he  would  describe  the  same 
Edward  Everett,  whom  he  once  called  upon 
and  found  busy  in  drilling  a  few  Revolutionary 
soldiers  who  were  to  be  on  the  platform  during 
Everett's  famous  Concord  oration.  These  he 
had  drilled  first  to  stand  up  and  be  admired  at 
a  certain  point  of  the  oration,  and  then  to  sit 
down  again,  by  signal,  that  the  audience  might 
rather  rise  in  their  honor.  Unfortunately,  one 
man,  who  was  totally  deaf,  forgot  the  instruc 
tions  and  absolutely  refused  to  sit  down,  because 
the  "squire"  had  told  him  to  stand  up.  In  a 
similar  way,  Bartlett's  unimpaired  memory  held 
the  whole  circle  of  eminent  men  among  whom 


JOHN  BARTLETT  199 

he  had  grown  up  from  youth,  and  a  casual  vis 
itor  might  infer  from  his  cheery  manner  that 
these  comrades  had  just  left  the  room.  Dur 
ing  his  last  illness,  mind  and  memory  seemed 
equally  unclouded  until  the  very  end,  and  al 
most  the  last  words  he  spoke  were  a  caution  to 
his  faithful  nurse  not  to  forget  to  pay  the  small 
sum  due  to  a  man  who  had  been  at  work  on  his 
driveway,  he  naming  the  precise  sum  due  in 
dollars  and  cents. 

He  died  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  on 
the  morning  of  December  3,  1905,  aged  eighty- 
five.  Was  "his  career,  after  all,  more  to  be  pitied 
or  envied?  He  lived  a  life  of  prolonged  and 
happy  labor  among  the  very  choicest  gems  of 
human  thought,  and  died  with  patient  fortitude 
after  all  visible  human  joys  had  long  been  laid 
aside. 


XVI 
HORACE   ELISHA  SCUDDER 


HORACE   ELISHA   SCUDDER 

IT  has  been  generally  felt,  I  think,  that  no  dis 
respect  was  shown  to  John  Fiske,  when  the 
New  York  " Nation"  headed  its  very  discrimi 
nating  sketch  of  him  with  the  title  "  John  Fiske, 
Popularizer  " ;  and  I  should  feel  that  I  showed 
no  discourtesy,  but  on  the  contrary,  did  honor 
to  Horace  Elisha  Scudder,  in  describing  him 
as  Literary  Workman.  I  know  of  no  other  man 
in  America,  perhaps,  who  so  well  deserved  that 
honorable  name  ;  no  one,  that  is,  who,  if  he  had 
a  difficult  piece  of  literary  work  to  do,  could  be 
so  absolutely  relied  upon  to  do  it  carefully  and 
well.  Whatever  it  was,  —  compiling,  editing, 
arranging,  translating,  indexing,  —  his  work  was 
uniformly  well  done.  Whether  this  is  the  high 
est  form  of  literary  distinction  is  not  now  the 
question.  What  other  distinction  he  might  have 
won  if  he  had  shown  less  of  modesty  or  self- 
restraint,  we  can  never  know.  It  is  true  that 
his  few  thoroughly  original  volumes  show  some 
thing  beyond  what  is  described  in  the  limited 
term,  workmanship.  But  that  he  brought  such 
workmanship  up  into  the  realm  of  art  is  as  cer 
tain  as  that  we  may  call  the  cabinet-maker  of 
the  Middle  Ages  an  artist. 


204  HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER 

Mr.  Scudder  was  born  in  Boston  on  October 
1 6,  1838,  the  son  of  Charles  and  Sarah  Lathrop 
(Coit)  Scudder,  and  died  at  Cambridge,  Massa 
chusetts,  on  January  n,  1902.  He  was  a  grad 
uate  of  Williams  College,  and  after  graduation 
went  to  New  York,  where  he  spent  three  years 
as  a  teacher.  It  was  there  that  he  wrote  his  first 
stories  for  children,  entitled  "  Seven  Little  Peo 
ple  and  their  Friends"  (New  York,  1862).  After 
his  father's  death  he  returned  to  Boston,  and 
thenceforward  devoted  himself  almost  wholly 
to  literary  pursuits.  He  prepared  the  "  Life  and 
Letters  of  David  Coit  Scudder,"  his  brother,  a 
missionary  to  India  (New  York,  1864) ;  edited 
the  "Riverside  Magazine"  for  young  people 
during  its  four  years'  existence  (from  1867  to 
1870)  ;  and  published  "Dream  Children"  and 
"  Stories  from  My  Attic."  Becoming  associated 
with  Houghton,  Mifflin,  and  Company,  he  edited 
for  them  the  "Atlantic  Monthly  "  from  1890 
to  1898,  preparing  for  it  also  that  invaluable 
Index,  so  important  to  bibliographers ;  he  also 
edited  the  "American  Commonwealths  "  series, 
and  two  detached  volumes,  "  American  Poems  " 
(1879)  and  "American Prose"  (1880).  He  pub 
lished  also  the  "Bodley  Books  "  (8  vols.,  Boston, 
1875  to  1887);  "The  Dwellers  in  Five  Sisters' 
Court"  (1876);  "Boston  Town"  (1881);  "Life 
of  Noah  Webster  "  (1882) ;  "A  History  of  the 


HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER  205 

United  States"  for  schools  (1884) ;  "Men  and 
Letters  "  (1887) ; "  Life  of  George  Washington  " 
(1889) ;  "Literature  in  School "  (1889) ;  "  Child- 
hood  in  Literature  and  Art"  (1894),  besides 
various  books  of  which  he  was  the  editor  or 
compiler  only.  He  was  also  for  nearly  six  years 
(1877-82)  a  member  of  the  Cambridge  School 
Committee;  for  five  years  (1884-89)  of  the 
State  Board  of  Education  ;  for  nine  years  (1889- 
98)  of  the  Harvard  University  visiting  com 
mittee  in  English  literature ;  and  was  at  the 
time  of  his  death  a  trustee  of  Williams  College, 
Wellesley  College,  and  St.  John's  Theological 
School,  these  making  all  together  a  quarter  of 
a  century  of  almost  uninterrupted  and  wholly 
unpaid  public  service  in  the  cause  of  education. 
After  May  28,  1889,  he  was  a  member  of  the 
American  Academy,  until  his  death.  This  is 
the  simple  record  of  a  most  useful  and  admira 
ble  life,  filled  more  and  more,  as  it  went  on, 
with  gratuitous  public  services  and  disinter 
ested  acts  for  others. 

As  a  literary  workman,  his  nicety  of  method 
and  regularity  of  life  went  beyond  those  of 
any  man  I  have  known.  Working  chiefly  at 
home,  he  assigned  in  advance  a  certain  number 
of  hours  daily  as  due  to  the  firm  for  which  he 
labored ;  and  he  then  kept  carefully  the  record 
of  these  hours,  and  if  he  took  out  a  half  hour  for 


206  HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER 

his  own  private  work,  made  it  up.  He  had  spe 
cial  work  assigned  by  himself  for  a  certain  time 
before  breakfast,  an  interval  which  he  daily 
gave  largely  to  the  Greek  Testament  and  at 
some  periods  to  Homer,  Thucydides,  Herodo 
tus,  and  Xenophon ;  working  always  with  the 
original  at  hand  and  writing  out  translations 
or  commentaries,  always  in  the  same  exquisite 
handwriting  and  at  first  contained  in  small  thin 
note-books,  afterwards  bound  in  substantial 
volumes,  with  morocco  binding  and  proper  let 
tering.  All  his  writings  were  thus  handsomely 
treated,  and  the  shelves  devoted  to  his  own 
works,  pamphlet  or  otherwise,  were  to  the  eye 
a  very  conservatory  and  flower  garden  of  litera 
ture  ;  or  like  a  chamberful  of  children  to  whom 
even  a  frugal  parent  may  allow  himself  the 
luxury  of  pretty  clothes.  All  his  literary  ar 
rangements  were  neat  and  perfect,  and  repre 
sented  that  other  extreme  from  the  celebrated 
collection  of  De  Quincey  in  Dove  Cottage  at 
Grasmere,  where  that  author  had  five  thousand 
books,  by  his  own  statement,  in  a  little  room 
ten  or  twelve  feet  square  ;  and  his  old  house 
keeper  explained  it  to  me  as  perfectly  practi 
cable  "  because  he  had  no  bookcases,"  but 
simply  piled  them  against  the  walls,  leaving 
here  and  there  little  gaps  in  which  he  put  his 
money. 


HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER  207 

In  the  delicate  and  touching  dedication  of 
Scudder's  chief  work,  "  Men  and  Letters,"  to 
his  friend  Henry  M.  Alden,  the  well-known  New- 
York  editor,  he  says :  "  In  that  former  state  of 
existence  when  we  were  poets,  you  wrote  verses 
which  I  knew  by  heart  and  I  read  dreamy  tales 
to  you  which  you  speculated  over  as  if  they  were 
already  classics.  Then  you  bound  your  manu 
script  verses  in  a  full  blue  calf  volume  and  put 
it  on  the  shelf,  and  I  woke  to  find  myself  at  the 
desk  of  a  literary  workman."  Later,  he  says  of 
himself,  "  Fortunately,  I  have  been  able  for  the 
most  part  to  work  out  of  the  glare  of  publicity." 
Yet  even  to  this  modest  phrase  he  adds  acutely  : 
"  But  there  is  always  that  something  in  us  which 
whispers  /,  and  after  a  while  the  anonymous 
critic  becomes  a  little  tired  of  listening  to  the 
whisper  in  his  solitary  cave,  and  is  disposed  to 
escape  from  it  by  coming  out  into  the  light  even 
at  the  risk  of  blinking  a  little,  and  by  suffering 
the  ghostly  voice  to  become  articulate,  though 
the  sound  startle  him.  One  craves  company  for 
his  thought,  and  is  not  quite  content  always 
to  sit  in  the  dark  with  his  guests." 

The  work  in  which  he  best  achieves  the  pur 
pose  last  stated  is  undoubtedly  the  collection 
of  papers  called  by  the  inexpressive  phrase 
"  Men  and  Letters  " ;  a  book  whose  title  was 
perhaps  a  weight  upon  it,  and  which  yet  con- 


208  HORACE  ELISHA  SCUUDER 

tained  some  of  the  very  best  of  American 
thought  and  criticism.  It  manifests  even  more 
than  his  "  Life  of  Lowell "  that  faculty  of  keen 
summing  up  and  epigrammatic  condensation 
which  became  so  marked  in  him  that  it  was 
very  visible,  I  am  assured,  even  in  the  literary 
councils  of  his  publishers,  two  members  of 
which  have  told  me  that  he  often,  after  a  long 
discussion,  so  summed  up  the  whole  situation 
in  a  sentence  or  two  that  he  left  them  free  to 
pass  to  something  else.  We  see  the  same  qual 
ity,  for  instance,  in  his  "Men  and  Letters,"  in 
his  papers  on  Dr.  Mulford  and  Longfellow. 
The  first  is  an  analysis  of  the  life  and  literary 
service  of  a  man  too  little  known  because  of 
early  death,  but  of  the  rarest  and  most  exqui 
site  intellectual  qualities,  Dr.  Elisha  Mulford, 
author  of  "  The  Nation"  and  then  of  "The  Re 
public  of  God."  In  this,  as  everywhere  in  the 
book,  Mr.  Scudder  shows  that  epigrammatic 
quality  which  amounted,  whether  applied  to 
books  or  men,  to  what  may  be  best  described 
as  a  quiet  brilliancy.  This  is  seen,  for  instance, 
when,  in  defending  Mulford  from  the  impu 
tation  of  narrowness,  his  friend  sums  up  the 
whole  character  of  the  man  and  saves  a  page  of 
more  detailed  discussion  by  saying,  "  He  was 
narrow  as  a  canon  is  narrow,  when  the  depth 
apparently  contracts  the  sides  "  (page  17).  So  in 


HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER  209 

his  criticism  called  "  Longfellow  and  his  Art," 
Scudder  repeatedly  expresses  in  a  sentence  what 
might  well  have  occupied  a  page,  as  where  he 
says  of  Longfellow,  "  He  was  first  of  all  a  com 
poser,  and  he  saw  his  subjects  in  their  relations 
rather  than  in  their  essence"  (page  44).  He  is 
equally  penetrating  where  he  says  that  Long 
fellow  "  brought  to  his  work  in  the  college  no 
special  love  of  teaching,"  but  "  a  deep  love  of 
literature  and  that  unacademic  attitude  toward 
his  work  which  was  a  liberalizing  power"  (page 
66).  He  touches  equally  well  that  subtle  quality 
of  Longfellow's  temperament,  so  difficult  to  de 
lineate,  when  he  says  of  him :  "  He  gave  of  him 
self  freely  to  his  intimate  friends,  but  he  dwelt, 
nevertheless,  in  a  charmed  circle,  beyond  the 
lines  of  which  men  could  not  penetrate  "  (page 
68).  These  admirable  statements  sufficiently  in 
dicate  the  rare  quality  of  Mr.  Scudder's  work. 
So  far  as  especial  passages  go,  Mr.  Scudder 
never  surpassed  the  best  chapters  of  "  Men  and 
Letters,"  but  his  one  adequate  and  complete 
work  as  a  whole  is  undoubtedly,  apart  from  his 
biographies,  the  volume  entitled  "  Childhood 
in  Literature  and  Art"  (1894).  This  book  was 
based  on  a  course  of  Lowell  lectures  given  by 
him  in  Boston,  and  is  probably  that  by  which  he 
himself  would  wish  to  be  judged,  at  least  up 
to  the  time  of  his  excellent  biography  of  Lowell. 


210  HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER 

He  deals  in  successive  chapters  with  Greek, 
Roman,  Hebrew,  Mediaeval,  English,  French, 
German,  and  American  literary  art  with  great 
symmetry  and  unity  throughout,  culminating, 
of  course,  in  Hawthorne  and  analyzing  the  por 
traits  of  children  drawn  in  his  productions.  In 
this  book  one  may  justly  say  that  he  has  added 
himself,  in  a  degree,  to  the  immediate  circle 
of  those  very  few  American  writers  whom  he 
commemorates  so  nobly  at  the  close  of  his 
essay  on  "  Longfellow  and  his  Art,"  in  "  Men 
and  Letters"  :  "It  is  too  early  to  make  a  full 
survey  of  the  immense  importance  to  American 
letters  of  the  work  done  by  half-a-dozen  great 
men  in  the  middle  of  this  century.  The  body  of 
prose  and  verse  created  by  them  is  constitut 
ing  the  solid  foundation  upon  which  other  struc 
tures  are  to  rise;  the  humanity  which  it  holds 
is  entering  into  the  life  of  the  country,  and  no 
material  invention,  or  scientific  discovery,  or  in 
stitutional  prosperity,  or  accumulation  of  wealth 
will  so  powerfully  affect  the  spiritual  well-being 
of  the  nation  for  generations  to  come  "  (page  69). 
If  it  now  be  asked  what  prevented  Horace 
Scudder  from  showing  more  fully  this  gift  of 
higher  literature  and  led  to  his  acquiescing, 
through  life,  in  a  comparatively  secondary  func 
tion,  I  can  find  but  one  explanation,  and  that  a 
most  interesting  one  to  us  in  New  England,  as 


HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER  211 

illustrating  the  effect  of  immediate  surroundings. 
His  father,  so  far  as  I  can  ascertain,  was  one  of 
those  Congregationalistsof  the  milder  type  who, 
while  strict  in  their  opinions,  are  led  by  a  sunny 
temperament  to  be  genial  with  their  households 
and  to  allow  them  innocent  amusements.  The 
mother  was  a  Congregationalist,  firm  but  not 
severe  in  her  opinions ;  but  always  controlled  by 
that  indomitable  New  England  conscience  of 
the  older  time,  which  made  her  sacrifice  herself 
to  every  call  of  charity  and  even  to  refuse,  as 
tradition  says,  to  have  window  curtains  in  her 
house,  inasmuch  as  many  around  her  could  not 
even  buy  blankets.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that 
Boston  was  then  a  great  missionary  centre,  that 
several  prominent  leaders  in  that  cause  were  of 
the  Scudder  family,  and  the  house  was  a  sort  of 
headquarters  for  them,  and  that  Horace  Scud- 
der's  own  elder  brother,  whose  memoirs  he  wrote, 
went  as  a  missionary  to  India,  dying  at  his  post. 
Speaking  of  his  father's  family  in  his  memoir, 
he  says  of  it,  "  In  the  conduct  of  the  household, 
there  was  recognition  of  some  more  profound 
meaning  in  life  than  could  find  expression  in 
mere  enjoyment  of  living;  while  the  presence 
of  a  real  religious  sentiment  banished  that 
counterfeit  solemnity  which  would  hang  over  in 
nocent  pleasure  like  a  cloud  "  (Scudder's  "  Life 
of  David  Coit  Scudder,"  page  4).  By  one  bred  in 


212  HORACE  ELISHA  SCUDDER 

such  an  atmosphere  of  self-sacrifice,  that  quality 
may  well  be  imbibed ;  it  may  even  become  a 
second  nature,  so  that  the  instinctive  demand 
for  self-assertion  may  become  subordinate  until 
many  a  man  ends  in  finding  full  contentment  in 
doing  perfectly  the  appointed  work  of  every  day. 
If  we  hold  as  we  should  that  it  is  character,  not 
mere  talent,  which  ennobles  life,  we  may  well 
feel  that  there  is  something  not  merely  pardon 
able,  but  ennobling,  in  such  a  habit  of  mind. 
Viewed  in  this  light,  his  simple  devotion  to  mod 
est  duty  may  well  be  to  many  of  us  rather  a 
model  than  a  thing  to  be  criticised. 


XVII 
EDWARD   ATKINSON 


EDWARD   ATKINSON 

EDWARD  ATKINSON,  a  member  of  the  Ameri 
can  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  since  March 
12,  1879,  was  born  in  Brookline,  Massachusetts, 
on  February  10,  1827,  and  died  in  Boston  on 
December  n,  1905.  He  was  descended  on  his 
father's  side  from  the  patriot  minute-man,  Lieu 
tenant  Amos  Atkinson,  and  on  the  maternal  side 
from  Stephen  Greenleaf,  a  well-known  fighter  of 
Indians  in  the  colonial  period  ;  thus  honestly  in 
heriting  on  both  sides  that  combative  spirit  in 
good  causes  which  marked  his  life.  Owing  to  the 
business  reverses  of  his  father,  he  was  prevented 
from  receiving,  as  his  elder  brother,  William  Par 
sons  Atkinson,  had  received,  a  Harvard  College 
education,  a  training  which  was  also  extended 
to  all  of  Edward  Atkinson's  sons,  at  a  later  day. 
At  fifteen  he  entered  the  employment  of  Read 
and  Chadwick,  Commission  Merchants,  Boston, 
in  the  capacity  of  office  boy ;  but  he  rapidly  rose 
to  the  position  of  book-keeper,  and  subsequently 
became  connected  with  several  cotton  manufac 
turing  companies  in  Lewiston,  Maine,  and  else 
where.  He  was  for  many  years  the  treasurer 
of  a  number  of  such  corporations,  and  in  1878 


216  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

became  President  of  the  Boston  Manufacturers' 
Mutual  Insurance  Company.  Such  business  was 
in  a  somewhat  chaotic  state  when  he  took  hold 
of  it,  but  he  remained  in  its  charge  until  his 
death,  having  during  this  time  organized,  en 
larged,  and  perfected  the  mutual  insurance  of 
industrial  concerns.  In  1855  he  married  Miss 
Mary  Caroline  Heath,  of  Brookline,  who  died  in 
December,  1907.  He  is  survived  by  seven  chil 
dren,  —  Mrs.  Ernest  Winsor,  E.  W.  Atkinson, 
Charles  H.  Atkinson,  William  Atkinson,  Robert 
W.  Atkinson,  Miss  C.  P.  Atkinson,  and  Mrs. 
R.  G.  Wadsworth. 

This  gives  the  mere  outline  of  a  life  of  extraor 
dinary  activity  and  usefulness  which  well  merits 
a  further  delineation  in  detail.  Mr.  Atkinson's 
interest  in  public  life  began  with  a  vote  for  Horace 
Mann  in  1848.  Twenty  years  after,  speaking  at 
Salem,  he  described  himself  as  never  having  been 
anything  else  than  a  Republican  ;  but  he  was  one 
of  those  who  supported  Cleveland  for  President 
in  1884,  and  whose  general  affinities  were  with 
the  Democratic  party.  He  opposed  with  especial 
vigor  what  is  often  called  "the  imperial  policy," 
which  followed  the  Cuban  War,  and  he  conducted 
a  periodical  of  his  own  from  time  to  time,  mak 
ing  the  most  elaborate  single  battery  which  the 
war-party  had  to  encounter. 

From  an  early  period  of  life  he  was  a  profuse 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  217 

and  vigorous  pamphleteer,  his  first  pamphlet  be 
ing  published  during  the  Civil  War  and  entitled 
"  Cheap  Cotton  by  Free  Labor,"  and  this  publica 
tion  led  to  his  acquaintance  with  David  R.  Wells 
and  Charles  Nordhoff,  thenceforth  his  life-long 
friends.  His  early  pamphlets  were  on  the  cotton 
question  in  different  forms  (1863-76) ;  he  wrote 
on  blockade-running  (1865)  ;  on  the  Pacific  Rail 
way  (1871) ;  and  on  mutual  fire  insurance  (1885), 
this  last  being  based  on  personal  experience  as 
the  head  of  a  mutual  company.  He  was  also, 
during  his  whole  life,  in  print  and  otherwise,  a 
strong  and  effective  fighter  for  sound  currency. 
A  large  part  of  his  attention  from  1889  on 
ward  was  occupied  by  experiments  in  cooking 
and  diet,  culminating  in  an  invention  of  his  own 
called  "The  Aladdin  Oven."  This  led  him  into 
investigations  as  to  the  cost  of  nutrition  in  dif 
ferent  countries,  on  which  subject  he  also  wrote 
pamphlets.  He  soon  was  led  into  experiments 
so  daring  that  he  claimed  to  have  proved  it  pos 
sible  to  cook  with  it,  in  open  air,  a  five-course 
dinner  for  ten  persons,  and  gave  illustrations  of 
this  at  outdoor  entertainments.  He  claimed  that 
good  nutrition  could  be  had  for  $i  per  week,  and 
that  a  family  of  five,  by  moderate  management, 
could  be  comfortably  supported  on  $  i  So  per  year 
(Boston  "Herald,"  October  8, 1891).  These  sur 
prising  figures  unfortunately  created  among  the 


218  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

laboring-class  a  good  deal  of  sharp  criticism,  cul 
minating  in  the  mistaken  inquiry,  why  he  did  not 
feed  his  own  family  at  $180  a  year,  if  it  was  so 
easy  ?  I  can  only  say  for  one,  that  if  the  meals 
at  that  price  were  like  a  dinner  of  which  I  par 
took  at  his  own  house  with  an  invited  party, 
and  at  which  I  went  through  the  promised  five 
courses  after  seeing  them  all  prepared  in  the  gar 
den,  I  think  that  his  standard  of  poverty  came 
very  near  to  luxury. 

Mingled  with  these  things  in  later  years  was 
introduced  another  valuable  department  of  in 
struction.  He  was  more  and  more  called  upon 
to  give  addresses,  especially  on  manufactures, 
before  Southern  audiences,  and  there  was  no 
disposition  to  criticise  him  for  his  anti-slavery 
record.  Another  man  could  hardly  be  found 
whose  knowledge  of  manufacturing  and  of  in 
surance  combined  made  him  so  fit  to  give  coun 
sel  in  the  new  business  impulse  showing  itself 
at  the  South.  He  wrote  much  (1877)  on  cotton 
goods,  called  for  an  international  cotton  exposi 
tion,  and  gave  an  address  at  Atlanta,  Georgia, 
which  was  printed  in  Boston  in  1881. 

Looking  now  at  Atkinson's  career  with  the 
eyes  of  a  literary  man,  it  seems  clear  to  me 
that  no  college  training  could  possibly  have 
added  to  his  power  of  accumulating  knowledge 
or  his  wealth  in  the  expression  of  it.  But  the 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  219 

academic  tradition  might  have  best  added  to 
these  general  statements  in  each  case  some 
simple  address  or  essay  which  would  bring  out 
clearly  to  the  minds  of  an  untrained  audience  the 
essential. points  of  each  single  theme.  Almost 
everything  he  left  is  the  talk  of  a  specially 
trained  man  to  a  limited  audience,  also  well 
trained,  — at  least  in  the  particular  department 
to  which  he  addresses  himself.  The  men  to 
whom  he  talks  may  not  know  how  to  read  or 
write,  but  they  are  all  practically  versed  in  the 
subjects  of  which  he  treats.  He  talks  as  a  miner 
to  miners,  a  farmer  to  farmers,  a  cook  to  cooks  ; 
but  among  all  of  his  papers  which  I  have  exam 
ined,  that  in  which  he  appears  to  the  greatest 
advantage  to  the  general  reader  is  his  "  Address 
before  the  Alumni  of  Andover  Theological 
Seminary  "  on  June  9,  1886.  Here  he  speaks 
as  one  representing  a  wholly  different  pursuit 
from  that  of  his  auditors ;  a  layman  to  clergy 
men,  or  those  aiming  to  become  so.  He  says 
to  them  frankly  at  the  outset,  "I  have  often 
thought  [at  church]  that  if  a  member  of  the  con 
gregation  could  sometimes  occupy  the  pulpit 
while  the  minister  took  his  place  in  the  pew, 
it  might  be  a  benefit  to  both.  The  duty  has 
been  assigned  to  me  to-day  to  trace  out  the  con 
nection  between  morality  and  a  true  system  of 
political  or  industrial  economy." 


220  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

He  goes  on  to  remind  them  that  the  book 
which  is  said  to  rank  next  to  the  Bible  toward 
the  benefit  of  the  human  race  is  Adam  Smith's 
"Wealth of  Nations,"  and  that  the  same  Adam 
Smith  wrote  a  book  on  moral  philosophy,  which 
is  now  but  little  read.  He  therefore  takes  the 
former  of  Smith's  books,  not  the  latter,  as  his 
theme,  and  thus  proceeds  :  — 

"  I  wonder  how  many  among  your  number  ever 
recall  the  fact  that  it  has  been  the  richest  manufac 
turers  who  have  clothed  the  naked  at  the  least  cost 
to  them  ;  that  it  is  the  great  bonanza  farmer  who 
now  feeds  the  hungry  at  the  lowest  price  ;  thatVan- 
derbilt  achieved  his  great  fortune  by  reducing  the 
cost  of  moving  a  barrel  of  flour  a  thousand  miles,  — 
from  three  dollars  and  fifty  cents  to  less  than  sev 
enty  cents.  This  was  the  great  work  assigned  to  him, 
whether  he  knew  it  or  not.  His  fortune  was  but  an 
incident,  —  the  main  object,  doubtless,  to  himself, 
but  a  trifling  incident  compared  to  what  he  saved 
others."  1 

He  then  goes  on  to  show  that  whatever  may 
be  the  tricks  or  wrongs  of  commerce,  they  lie 
on  the  surface,  and  that  every  great  success  is 
based  upon  very  simple  facts. 

"  The  great  manufacturer  [he  says]  who  guides 
the  operations  of  a  factory  of  a  hundred  thousand 
spindles,  in  which  fifteen  hundred  men,  women,  and 
1  Address  before  the  Alumni  of  Andover,  I. 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  221 

children  earn  their  daily  bread,  himself  works  on  a 
narrow  margin  of  one  fourth  of  a  cent  on  each  yard 
of  cloth.  If  he  shall  not  have  applied  truth  to  every 
branch  of  construction  and  of  the  operation  of  that 
factor}',  it  will  fail  and  become  worthless  ;  and  then 
with  toilsome  labor  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
women  might  try  to  clothe  themselves  and  you,  who 
are  now  clothed  by  the  service  of  fifteen  hundred 
only. 

"  Such  is  the  disparity  in  the  use  of  time,  brought 
into  beneficent  action  by  modern  manufacturing 
processes. 

"  The  banker  who  deals  in  credit  by  millions 
upon  millions  must  possess  truth  of  insight,  truth 
of  judgment,  truth  of  character.  Probity  and  integ 
rity  constitute  his  capital,  for  the  very  reason  that 
the  little  margin  which  he  seeks  to  gain  for  his 
own  service  is  but  the  smallest  fraction  of  a  per 
cent  upon  each  transaction.  I  supervise  directly  or 
indirectly  the  insurance  upon  four  hundred  million 
dollars'  worth  of  factory  property.  The  products 
of  these  factories,  machine-shops,  and  other  works 
must  be  worth  six  hundred  million  dollars  a  year. 
It  is  n't  worth  fifty  cents  on  each  hundred  dollars 
to  guarantee  their  notes  or  obligations,  while  ninety- 
nine  and  one  half  per  cent  of  all  the  sales  they  make 
will  be  promptly  paid  when  due."  1 

He  elsewhere  turns  from  viewing  the  factory 
system  with  business  eyes  alone  to  the  consid- 

1  Address  before  the  Alumni  of  Andover,  10. 


222  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

eration  of  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  la 
borer.  There  is  no  want  of  sympathy,  we  soon 
find,  in  this  man  of  inventions  and  statistics. 
He  thus  goes  on  :  — 

"The  very  manner  in  which  this  great  seething, 
toiling,  crowded  mass  of  laboring  men  and  women 
bear  the  hardships  of  life  leads  one  to  faith  in  hu 
manity  and  itself  gives  confidence  in  the  future.  If 
it  were  not  that  there  is  a  Divine  order  even  in 
the  hardships  which  seem  so  severe,  and  that  even 
the  least  religious,  in  the  technical  sense,  have  faith 
in  each  other,  the  anarchist  and  nihilist  might  be  a 
cause  of  dread. 

"  As  I  walk  through  the  great  factories  which  are 
insured  in  the  company  of  which  I  am  president, 
trying  to  find  out  what  more  can  be  done  to  save 
them  from  destruction  by  fire,  I  wonder  if  I  myself 
should  not  strike,  just  for  the  sake  of  variety,  if 
I  were  a  mule-spinner,  obliged  to  bend  over  the 
machine,  mending  the  ends  of  the  thread,  while  I 
walked  ten  or  fifteen  miles  a  day  without  raising  my 
eyes  to  the  great  light  above.  I  wonder  how  men 
and  women  bear  the  monotony  of  the  workshop  and 
of  the  factory,  in  which  the  division  of  labor  is  car 
ried  to  its  utmost,  and  in  which  they  must  work  year 
in  and  year  out,  only  on  some  small  part  of  a  fabric 
or  an  implement,  never  becoming  capable  of  mak 
ing  the  whole  fabric  or  of  constructing  the  whole 
machine."  l 

1  Address  to  Workingmen  in  Providence,  April  1 1, 1886,  p.  19. 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  223 

We  thus  find  him  quite  ready  to  turn  his  va 
ried  knowledge  and  his  executive  power  towards 
schemes  for  the  relief  of  the  operative,  schemes 
of  which  he  left  many. 

Mr.  Atkinson,  a  year  or  two  later  (1890), 
wrote  a  similarly  popularized  statement  of  social 
science  for  an  address  on  "  Religion  and  Life  " 
before  the  American  Unitarian  Association.  In 
his  usual  matter-of-fact  way,  he  had  prepared 
himself  by  inquiring  at  the  headquarters  of  dif 
ferent  religious  denominations  for  a  printed 
creed  of  each.  He  first  bought  an  Episcopal 
creed  at  the  Old  Corner  Bookstore  for  two 
cents,  an  Orthodox  creed  at  the  Congregational 
Building  for  the  same  amount,  then  a  Methodist 
two-cent  creed  also,  a  Baptist  creed  for  five 
cents,  and  a  Presbyterian  one  for  ten,  Unita 
rian  and  Universalist  creeds  being  furnished  him 
for  nothing  ;  and  then  he  proceeds  to  give  some 
extracts  whose  bigotry  makes  one  shudder,  and 
not  wonder  much  that  he  expressed  sympathy 
mainly  with  the  Catholics  and  the  Jews,  rather 
than  with  the  severer  schools  among  Protest 
ants.  And  it  is  already  to  be  noticed  how  much 
the  tendency  of  liberal  thought,  during  the  last 
twenty  years,  has  been  in  the  direction  whither 
his  sympathies  went. 

As  time  went  on,  he  had  to  undergo  the  test 
which  awaits  all  Northern  public  men  visiting 


224  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

the  Southern  States,  but  not  met  by  all  in  so 
simple  and  straightforward  a  way  as  he.  Those 
who  doubt  the  capacity  of  .the  mass  of  men  in 
our  former  slave  states  to  listen  to  plainness  of 
speech  should  turn  with  interest  to  Atkinson's 
plain  talk  to  the  leading  men  of  Atlanta,  Geor 
gia,  in  October,  1880.  He  says,  almost  at  the 
beginning :  "  Now,  gentlemen  of  the  South,  I 
am  going  to  use  free  speech  for  a  purpose  and 
to  speak  some  plain  words  of  truth  and  sober 
ness  to  you.  ...  I  speak,  then,  to  you  here  and 
now  as  a  Republican  of  Republicans,  as  an  Abo 
litionist  of  early  time,  a  Free-Soiler  of  later  date, 
and  a  Republican  of  to-day."  And  the  record 
is  that  he  was  received  with  applause.  He  goes 
on  to  say  as  frankly  :  "When  slavery  ended,  not 
only  were  blacks  made  free  from  the  bondage 
imposed  by  others,  but  whites  as  well  were  re 
deemed  by  the  bondage  they  had  imposed  upon 
themselves.  .  .  .  When  you  study  the  past  sys 
tem  of  slave  labor  with  the  present  system  of 
free  labor,  irrespective  of  all  personal  considera 
tions,  you  will  be  mad  down  to  the  soles  of  your 
boots  to  think  that  you  ever  tolerated  it ;  and 
when  you  have  come  to  this  wholesome  condi 
tion  of  mind,  you  will  wonder  how  the  devil  you 
could  have  been  so  slow  in  seeing  it.  [Laugh- 
ter.]" 

Then  he  suddenly  drops  down  to  the  solid 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  225 

fact  and  says  :  "  Are  you  not  asking  Northern 
men  to  come  here,  and  do  you  not  seek  North 
ern  capital?  If  you  suppose  either  will  come 
here  unless  every  man  can  say  what  he  pleases, 
as  I  do  now,  you  are  mistaken."  Then  he  goes  on 
with  his  speech,  rather  long  as  he  was  apt  to 
make  them,  but  addressing  a  community  much 
more  leisurely  than  that  which  he  had  left  at 
home ;  filling  their  minds  with  statistics,  direc 
tions,  and  methods,  till  at  last,  recurring  to  the 
question  of  caste  and  color,  he  closes  fearlessly  : 
"  As  you  convert  the  darkness  of  oppression 
and  slavery  to  liberty  and  justice,  so  shall  you 
be  judged  by  men,  and  by  Him  who  created  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth." 

After  tracing  the  course  and  training  of  an 
eminent  American  at  home,  it  is  often  interest 
ing  to  follow  him  into  the  new  experiences  of 
the  foreign  traveler.  In  that  very  amusing  book, 
"Notes  from  a  Diary,"  by  Grant  Duff  (later  Sir 
Mountstuart  Elphinstone  Grant  Duff),  the  au 
thor  writes  that  he  came  unexpectedly  upon  a 
breakfast  (June,  1887),  the  guests  being  "Atkin 
son,  the  New  England  Free  Trader,  Colonel 
Hay,  and  Frederic  Harrison,  all  of  whom  were 
well  brought  out  by  our  host  and  talked  admir 
ably."  I  quote  some  extracts  from  the  talk  :  — 

"  Mr.  Atkinson  said  that  quite  the  best  after- 
dinner  speech  he  had  ever  heard  was  from  Mr. 


226  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

Samuel  Longfellow,  brother  of  the  poet.  An 
excellent  speech  had  been  made  by  Mr.  Long- 
worth,  and  the  proceedings  should  have  closed, 
when  Mr.  Longfellow  was  very  tactlessly  asked 
to  address  the  meeting,  which  he  did  in  the 
words :  '  It  is,  I  think,  well  known  that  worth 
makes  the  man,  but  want  of  it  the  fellow,'  and 
sat  down."  After  this  mild  beginning  we  have 
records  of  good  talk. 

"  Other  subjects  [Grant  Duff  says]  were  the  hos 
tility  of  the  Socialists  in  London  to  the  Positivists 
and  to  the  Trades  Unions  ;  the  great  American  for 
tunes  and  their  causes,  the  rapid  melting  away  of 
some  of  them,  the  hindrance  which  they  are  to  po 
litical  success  ;  and  servants  in  the  United  States,  of 
whom  Atkinson  spoke  relatively,  Colonel  Hay  ab 
solutely,  well,  saying  that  he  usually  kept  his  from 
six  to  eight  years.  .  .  . 

"  Atkinson  said  that  all  the  young  thought  and 
ability  in  America  is  in  favor  of  free  trade,  but  that 
free  trade  has  not  begun  to  make  any  way  politi 
cally.  Harrison  remarked  that  he  was  unwillingly, 
but  ever  more  and  more,  being  driven  to  believe 
that  the  residuum  was  almost  entirely  composed 
of  people  who  would  not  work.  Atkinson  took  the 
same  view,  observing  that  during  the  war  much  was 
said  about  the  misery  of  the  working-women  of 
Boston.  He  offered  admirable  terms  if  they  would 
only  go  a  little  way  into  the  country  to  work  in  his 
factory.  Forty  were  at  last  got  together  to  have  the 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  227 

conditions  explained  —  ten  agreed  to  go  next  morn 
ing,  of  whom  one  arrived  at  the  station,  and  she 
would  not  go  alone  !  " 

On  another  occasion  we  read  in  the  "  Diary  "  : 

"  We  talked  of  Father  Taylor,  and  he  [Atkinson] 
told  us  that  the  great  orator  once  began  a  sermon 
by  leaning  over  the  pulpit,  with  his  arms  folded, 
and  saying,  '  You  people  ought  to  be  very  good,  if 
you  're  not,  for  you  live  in  Paradise  already.' 

"  The  conversation,  in  which  Sir  Louis  Malet  took 
part,  turned  to  Mill's  economical  heresies,  especially 
that  which  relates  to  the  fostering  of  infant  indus 
tries.  Atkinson  drew  a  striking  picture  of  the  highly 
primitive  economic  condition  of  the  South  before 
the  war,  and  said  that  now  factories  of  all  kinds  are 
springing  up  throughout  the  country  in  spite  of  the 
keen  competition  of  the  North.  He  cited  a  piece 
of  advice  given  to  his  brother  by  Theodore  Parker, 
'  Never  try  to  lecture  down  to  your  audience.' 
This  maxim  is  in  strict  accordance  with  an  opinion 
expressed  by  Hugh  Miller,  whom,  having  to  ad 
dress  on  the  other  side  of  the  Firth  just  the  same 
sort  of  people  as  those  amongst  whom  he  lived  at 
Cromarty,  I  took  as  my  guide  in  this  matter  during 
the  long  period  in  which  I  was  connected  with  the 
Elgin  Burghs. 

"  Atkinson  went  on  to  relate  that  at  the  time  of 
Mr.  Hayes's  election  to  the  presidency  there  was 
great  danger  of  an  outbreak,  and  he  sat  in  council 
with  General  Taylor  and  Abraham  Hewitt,  doing 


228  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

his  best  to  prevent  it.  At  length  he  exclaimed : 
4  Now  I  think  we  may  fairly  say  that  the  war  is  over. 
Here  are  we  three  acting  together  for  a  common 
object,  and  who  are  we  ?  You,  Mr.  Hewitt,  are  the 
leader  of  the  Democratic  party  in  New  York  ;  I  am 
an  old  Abolitionist  who  subscribed  to  furnish  John 
Brown  and  his  companions  with  rifles  ;  you,  Gen 
eral  Taylor,  are  the  last  Confederate  officer  who 
surrendered  an  army,  and  you  surrendered  it  not 
because  you  were  willing  to  do  so,  but,  as  you  your 
self  admit,  because  you  could  n't  help  it.'  " 

The  publication  which  will  perhaps  be  much 
consulted  in  coming  years  as  the  best  periodical 
organ  of  that  party  in  the  nation  which  was 
most  opposed  to  the  Philippine  war  will  doubt 
less  be  the  work  issued  by  Mr.  Atkinson  on 
his  own  responsibility  and  by  his  own  editing, 
from  June  3,  1899,  to  September,  1900,  under 
the  name  of  "  The  Anti-Imperialist."  It  makes 
a  solid  volume  of  about  400  octavo  pages,  and 
was  conducted  wholly  on  Atkinson's  own  re 
sponsibility,  financially  and  otherwise,  though  a 
large  part  of  the  expense  was  paid  him  by  volun 
teers,  to  the  extent  of  $5,657.87  or  more,  cover 
ing  an  outlay  of  $5,870.62,  this  amount  being 
largely  received  in  sums  of  one  dollar,  obtained 
under  what  is  known  as  the  chain  method.  For 
this  amount  were  printed  more  than  100,000 
copies  of  a  series  of  pamphlets,  of  which  the 


EDWARD  ATKINSON  229 

first  two  were  withdrawn  from  the  mail  as 
seditious  under  President  McKinley's  adminis 
tration.  A  more  complete  triumph  of  personal 
independence  was  perhaps  never  seen  in  our 
literature,  and  it  is  easy  to  recognize  the  tri 
umph  it  achieved  for  a  high-minded  and  cour 
ageous  as  well  as  constitutionally  self-willed 
man.  The  periodical  exerted  an  influence  which 
lasts  to  this  day,  although  the  rapidity  of  politi 
cal  change  has  now  thrown  it  into  the  back 
ground  for  all  except  the  systematic  student  of 
history.  It  seemed  to  Mr.  Atkinson,  at  any  rate, 
his  crowning  work. 

The  books  published  by  Edward  Atkinson 
were  the  following :  "  The  Distribution  of 
Profits,"  1885  ;  "  The  Industrial  Progress  of  the 
Nation,"  1889;  "The  Margin  of  Profit,"  1890; 
"Taxation  and  Work,"  1892;  "Facts  and 
Figures  the  Basis  of  Economic  Science,"  1894. 
This  last  was  printed  at  the  Riverside  Press,  the 
others  being  issued  by  Putnam  &  Co.,  New  York. 
He  wrote  also  the  following  papers  in  leading 
periodicals:  "Is  Cotton  our  King?"  ("Con 
tinental  Monthly,"  March,  1862);  "Revenue 
Reform"  ("Atlantic,"  October,  1871);  "An 
American  View  of  American  Competition " 
("Fortnightly,"  London,  March,  1879);  "The 
Unlearned  Professions"  ("Atlantic,"  June, 
1880);  "What  makes  the  Rate  of  Interest" 


230  EDWARD  ATKINSON 

("  Forum,"  1880) ;  "  Elementary  Instruction  m 
the  Mechanics  Arts  "  ("  Century,"  May,  1881) ; 
"Leguminous  Plants  suggested  for  Ensilage" 
("Agricultural,"  1882);  "  Economy  in  Domes 
tic  Cookery"  ("American  Architect,"  May, 
1887);  "Must  Humanity  starve  at  Last?" 
"  How  can  Wages  be  increased  ?  "  "  The  Strug 
gle  for  Subsistence,"  "The  Price  of  Life  "  (all 
in  "  Forum  "  for  1888) ;  "  How  Society  reforms 
Itself,"  and  "  The  Problem  of  Poverty  "  (both  in 
"Forum  "  for  1889) ;  "  A  Single  Tax  on  Land  " 
("Century,"  1890);  and  many  others.  When 
the  amount  of  useful  labor  performed  by  the  men 
of  this  generation  comes  to  be  reviewed  a  cen 
tury  hence,  it  is  doubtful  whether  a  more  sub 
stantial  and  varied  list  will  be  found  credited 
to  the  memory  of  any  one  in  America  than 
that  which  attaches  to  the  memory  of  Edward 
Atkinson. 


XVIII 
JAMES   ELLIOT   CABOT 


JAMES    ELLIOT   CABOT 

OUR  late  associate,  Elliot  Cabot,  of  whom  I 
have  been  appointed  to  write  a  sketch,  was  to 
me,  from  my  college  days,  an  object  of  peculiar 
interest,  on  a  variety  of  grounds.  He  was  dis 
tantly  related  to  me,  in  more  than  one  way, 
through  the  endless  intermarriages  of  the  old 
Essex  County  families.  Though  two  years  and 
a  half  older,  he  was  but  one  year  in  advance 
of  me  in  Harvard  College.  He  and  his  chum, 
Henry  Bryant,  who  had  been  my  schoolmate, 
were  among  the  early  founders  of  the  Harvard 
Natural  History  Society,  then  lately  established, 
of  which  I  was  an  ardent  member ;  and  I  have 
never  had  such  a  sensation  of  earthly  glory  as 
when  I  succeeded  Bryant  in  the  responsible 
function  of  Curator  of  Entomology  in  that  au 
gust  body.  I  used  sometimes  in  summer  to  en 
counter  Cabot  in  the  Fresh  Pond  marshes,  then 
undrained,  which  he  afterwards  described  so  de 
lightfully  in  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  in  his  paper 
entitled  " Sedge  Birds"  (xxiii,  384).  On  these 
occasions  he  bore  his  gun,  and  I  only  the  hum 
bler  weapon  of  a  butterfly  net.  After  we  had  left 
college,  I  looked  upon  him  with  envy  as  one  of 


234  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

the  early  and  successful  aspirants  to  that  Ger 
man  post-collegiate  education  which  was  already 
earnestly  desired,  but  rarely  attained,  by  the 
more  studious  among  Harvard  graduates.  After 
his  return,  I  was  brought  more  or  less  in  con 
tact  with  him,  at  the  close  of  the  "Dial"  period, 
and  in  the  following  years  of  Transcendental 
ism;  and,  later  still,  I  was  actively  associated 
with  him  for  a  time  in  that  group  of  men  who 
have  always  dreamed  of  accomplishing  some 
thing  through  the  Harvard  Visiting  Committee, 
and  have  retired  from  it  with  hopes  unaccom 
plished.  Apart  from  his  labors  as  Emerson's 
scribe  and  editor,  he  seemed  to  withdraw  him 
self  more  and  more  from  active  life  as  time 
went  on,  and  to  accept  gracefully  the  attitude 
which  many  men  find  so  hard,  —  that  of  being, 
in  a  manner,  superseded  by  the  rising  genera 
tion.  This  he  could  do  more  easily,  since  he  left 
a  family  of  sons  to  represent  in  various  forms 
the  tastes  and  gifts  that  were  combined  in  him ; 
and  he  also  left  a  manuscript  autobiography, 
terse,  simple,  and  modest,  like  himself,  to  re 
present  what  was  in  its  way  a  quite  unique 
career.  Of  this  sketch  I  have  been  allowed  to 
avail  myself  through  the  courtesy  of  his  sons. 

James  Elliot  Cabot  was  born  in  Boston 
June  1 8,  1821,  his  birthplace  being  in  Quincy 
Place,  upon  the  slope  of  Fort  Hill,  in  a  house 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT  235 

which  had  belonged  to  his  grandfather,  Samuel 
Cabot,  brother  of  George  Cabot,  the  well-known 
leader  of  the  Federalists  in  his  day.  These 
brothers  belonged  to  a  family  originating  in  the 
Island  of  Jersey  and  coming  early  to  Salem, 
Massachusetts.  Elliot  Cabot's  father  was  also 
named  Samuel,  while  his  mother  was  the  eldest 
child  of  Thomas  Handasyd  Perkins  and  Sarah 
Elliot;  the  former  being  best  known  as  Colonel 
Perkins,  who  gave  his  house  and  grounds  on 
Pearl  Street  toward  the  foundation  of  the  Blind 
Asylum  bearing  his  name,  and  also  gave  pro 
fuse  gifts  to  other  Boston  institutions;  deriv 
ing  meanwhile  his  military  title  from  having 
held  command  of  the  Boston  Cadets.  Elliot 
Cabot  was,  therefore,  born  and  bred  in  the 
most  influential  circle  of  the  little  city  of  that 
date,  and  he  dwelt  in  what  was  then  the  most 
attractive  part  of  Boston,  though  long  since 
transformed  into  a  business  centre. 

His  summers  were  commonly  spent  at  Nahant, 
then  a  simple  and  somewhat  primitive  seaside 
spot,  and  his  childhood  was  also  largely  passed 
in  the  house  in  Brookline  built  by  Colonel  Per 
kins  for  his  daughter.  Elliot  Cabot  went  to 
school  in  Boston  under  the  well-known  teachers 
of  that  day,  —  Thayer,  Ingraham,  and  Leverett. 
When  twelve  years  old,  during  the  absence  of 
his  parents  in  Europe,  he  was  sent  to  a  board- 


236  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

ing-school  in  Brookline,  but  spent  Saturday  and 
Sunday  with  numerous  cousins  at  the  house  of 
Colonel  Perkins,  their  common  grandfather, 
who  lived  in  a  large  and  hospitable  manner, 
maintaining  an  ampler  establishment  than  is  to 
be  found  in  the  more  crowded  Boston  of  to-day. 
This  ancestor  was  a  man  of  marked  individuality, 
and  I  remember  hearing  from  one  of  his  grand 
children  an  amusing  account  of  the  scene  which 
occurred,  on  one  of  these  Sunday  evenings, 
after  the  delivery  of  a  total  abstinence  sermon 
by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Channing,  of  whose  parish 
Colonel  Perkins  was  one  of  the  leading  mem 
bers.  The  whole  theory  of  total  abstinence 
was  then  an  absolute  innovation,  and  its  procla 
mation,  which  came  rather  suddenly  from  Dr. 
Channing,  impressed  Colonel  Perkins  much  as 
it  might  have  moved  one  of  Thackeray's  Eng 
lish  squires;  insomuch  that  he  had  a  double 
allowance  of  wine  served  out  that  evening  to 
each  of  his  numerous  grandsons  in  place  of 
their  accustomed  wineglass  of  diluted  bever 
age,  and  this  to  their  visible  disadvantage  as 
the  evening  went  on. 

Elliot  Cabot  entered  Harvard  College  in  1836 
as  Freshman,  and  though  he  passed  his  entrance 
examinations  well,  took  no  prominent  rank  in 
his  class,  but  read  all  sorts  of  out-of-the-way 
books  and  studied  natural  history.  He  was  also 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT  237 

an  early  reader  of  Carlyle's  "  Sartor  Resartus," 
then  just  published;  and  was,  in  general,  quite 
disposed  to  pursue  his  own  course  in  mental 
culture.  He  belonged  to  the  Hasty  Pudding 
Club  and  to  the  Porcellian  Club,  but  spent 
much  time  with  his  classmates,  Henry  Bryant 
and  William  Sohier,  in  shooting  excursions, 
which  had  then  the  charm  of  being  strictly 
prohibited  by  the  college.  The  young  men 
were  obliged  to  carry  their  guns  slung  for  con 
cealment  in  two  parts,  the  barrels  separated 
from  the  stock,  under  their  cloaks,  which  were 
then  much  worn  instead  of  overcoats.  This 
taste  was  strengthened  by  the  example  of 
Cabot's  elder  brother,  afterwards  Dr.  Samuel 
Cabot,  an  ornithologist;  and  as  the  latter  was 
then  studying  medicine  in  Paris,  the  young 
men  used  to  send  him  quantities  of  specimens 
for  purposes  of  exchange.  Dr.  Henry  Bryant 
is  well  remembered  in  Boston  for  the  large 
collection  of  birds  given  by  him  to  the  Boston 
Natural  History  Society. 

Soon  after  his  graduation,  in  1840,  Elliot 
Cabot  went  abroad  with  the  object  of  joining 
his  elder  brother  in  Switzerland,  visiting  Italy, 
wintering  in  Paris,  and  returning  home  in  the 
spring  ;  but  this  ended  in  his  going  for  the  win 
ter  to  Heidelberg  instead,  a  place  then  made 
fascinating  to  all  young  Americans  through  the 


238  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

glowing  accounts  in  Longfellow's  "  Hyperion." 
They  were  also  joined  by  two  other  class 
mates, — Edward  Holker  Welch,  afterwards  well 
known  in  the  Roman  Catholic  priesthood,  and 
John  Fenwick  Heath,  of  Virginia,  well  remem 
bered  by  the  readers  of  Lowell's  letters.  All  of 
these  four  were  aiming  at  the  profession  of  the 
law,  although  not  one  of  them,  I  believe,  finally 
devoted  himself  to  its  practice.  Migrating  after 
wards  to  Berlin,  after  the  fashion  of  German 
students,  they  were  admitted  to  the  University 
on  their  Harvard  degrees  by  Ranke,  the  great 
historian,  who  said,  as  he  inspected  their  parch 
ments,  "Ah!  the  High  School  at  Boston!" 
which  they  thought  showed  little  respect  for 
President  Quincy's  parchment,  until  they  found 
that  "  Hoch  Schule  "  was  the  German  equiva 
lent  for  University.  There  they  heard  the  lec 
tures  of  Schelling,  then  famous,  whom  they 
found  to  be  a  little  man  of  ordinary  appearance, 
old,  infirm,  and  taking  snuff  constantly,  as  if  to 
keep  himself  awake.  Later  they  again  removed, 
this  time  to  Gottingen,  where  Cabot  busied  him 
self  with  the  study  of  Kant,  and  also  attended 
courses  in  Rudolph  Wagner's  laboratory.  Here 
he  shared  more  of  the  social  life  of  his  com 
panions,  frequented  their  Liederkranze,  learned 
to  fence  and  to  dance,  and  spent  many  evenings 
at  students'  festivals. 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT  239 

Cabot  sums  up  his  whole  European  remi 
niscences  as  follows  :  "  As  I  look  back  over  my 
residence  in  Europe,  what  strikes  me  is  the 
waste  of  time  and  energy  from  having  had  no 
settled  purpose  to  keep  my  head  steady.  I  seem 
to  have  been  always  well  employed  and  happy, 
but  I  had  been  indulging  a  disposition  to  men 
tal  sauntering,  and  the  picking  up  of  scraps, 
very  unfavorable  to  my  education.  I  was,  I 
think,  naturally  inclined  to  hover  somewhat 
above  the  solid  earth  of  practical  life,  and  thus 
to  miss  its  most  useful  lessons.  The  result,  I 
think,  was  to  confirm  me  in  the  vices  of  my 
mental  constitution  and  to  cut  off  what  chance 
there  was  of  my  accomplishing  something  worth 
while." 

In  March,  1843,  he  finally  left  Gottingen  for 
home  by  way  of  Belgium  and  England,  and 
entered  the  Harvard  Law  School  in  the  autumn, 
taking  his  degree  there  two  years  later,  in  1845. 
Renewing  acquaintance  with  him  during  this 
period,  I  found  him  to  be,  as  always,  modest 
and  reticent  in  manner,  bearing  unconsciously 
a  certain  European  prestige  upon  him,  which  so 
commanded  the  respect  of  a  circle  of  young 
men  that  we  gave  him  the  sobriquet  of  "  Jarno," 
after  the  well-known  philosophic  leader  in 
Goethe's  "Wilhelm  Meister."  Whatever  he 
may  say  of  himself,  I  cannot  help  still  retaining 


240  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

somewhat  of  my  old  feeling  about  the  mental 
training  of  the  man  who,  while  in  the  Law 
School,  could  write  a  paper  so  admirable  as 
Cabot's  essay  entitled  "  Immanuel  Kant " 
("Dial,"  iv,  409),  an  essay  which  seems  to  me 
now,  as  it  then  seemed,  altogether  the  sim 
plest  and  most  effective  statement  I  have  ever 
encountered  of  the  essential  principles  of  that 
great  thinker's  philosophy.  I  remember  that 
when  I  told  Cabot  that  I  had  been  trying  to 
read  Kant's  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  "  in  an 
English  translation,  but  could  not  understand 
it,  he  placidly  replied  that  he  had  read  it  twice 
in  German  and  had  thought  he  comprehended 
it,  but  that  Meiklejohn's  translation  was  be 
yond  making  out,  so  that  I  need  not  be  dis 
couraged. 

After  graduating  from  the  Law  School,  he 
went  for  a  year  into  a  law  office  in  Boston,  act 
ing  as  senior  partner  to  my  classmate,  Francis 
Edward  Parker,  who,  being  a  born  lawyer,  as 
Cabot  was  not,  found  it  for  his  own  profit  to 
sever  the  partnership  at  the  end  of  a  year, 
while  Cabot  retired  from  the  profession  for 
ever.  His  German  training  had  meanwhile 
made  him  well  known  to  the  leaders  of  a  new 
literary  enterprise,  originating  with  Theodore 
Parker  and  based  upon  a  meeting  at  Mr.  Emer 
son's  house  in  1849, tne  object  being  the  organ- 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT  241 

ization  of  a  new  magazine,  which  should  be,  in 
Theodore  Parker's  phrase,  "the  'Dial'  with 
a  beard."  Liberals  and  reformers  were  present 
at  the  meeting,  including  men  so  essentially 
diverse  as  Sumner  and  Thoreau.  Parker  was, 
of  course,  to  be  the  leading  editor,  and  be 
came  such.  Emerson  also  consented,  "rather 
weakly,"  as  Cabot  says  in  his  memoranda,  to 
appear,  and  contributed  only  the  introductory 
address,  while  Cabot  himself  agreed  to  act  as 
corresponding  secretary  and  business  manager. 
The  "  Massachusetts  Quarterly  Review  "  sus 
tained  itself  with  difficulty  for  three  years,  — 
showing  more  of  studious  and  systematic  work 
than  its  predecessor,  the  "  Dial,"  but  far  less 
of  freshness  and  originality, — and  then  went 
under. 

A  more  successful  enterprise  in  which  he  was 
meanwhile  enlisted  was  a  trip  to  Lake  Superior 
withAgassiz,  in  1850,  when  Cabot  acted  as  sec 
retary  and  wrote  and  illustrated  the  published 
volume  of  the  expedition,  —  a  book  which  was 
then  full  of  fresh  novelties,  and  which  is  still 
very  readable.  Soon  after  his  return,  he  went 
into  his  brother  Edward's  architect  office  in 
Boston  to  put  his  accounts  in  order,  and  ulti 
mately  became  a  partner  in  the  business,  erect 
ing  various  buildings. 

He   was   married  on   September   28,    1857, 


242  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

to  Elizabeth  Dwight,  daughter  of  Edmund 
D wight,  Esq.,  a  woman  of  rare  qualities  and 
great  public  usefulness,  who  singularly  carried 
on  the  tradition  of  those  Essex  County  women 
of  an  earlier  generation,  who  were  such  strong 
helpmates  to  their  husbands.  Of  Mrs.  Cabot  it 
might  almost  have  been  said,  as  was  said  by 
John  Lowell  in  1826  of  his  cousin,  Elizabeth 
Higginson,  wife  of  her  double  first  cousin, 
George  Cabot :  "  She  had  none  of  the  advan 
tages  of  early  education  afforded  so  bountifully 
to  the  young  ladies  of  the  present  age ;  but  she 
surpassed  all  of  them  in  the  acuteness  of  her 
observation,  in  the  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
and  in  her  power  of  expressing  and  defending 
the  opinions  which  she  had  formed."1  Thus 
Elliot  Cabot  writes  of  his  wife:  "From  the 
time  when  the  care  of  her  children  ceased  to 
occupy  the  most  of  her  time,  she  gradually  be 
came  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  the  town 
officials,  as  well  as  the  unofficial  counselor  of 
many  who  needed  the  unfailing  succor  of  her 
inexhaustible  sympathy  and  practical  helpful 
ness." 

Cabot  visited  Europe  anew  after  his  marriage, 
and  after  his  return,  served  for  nine  years  as  a 
school-committee-man  in  Brookline,  where  he 
resided.  He  afterwards  did  faithful  duty  for  six 

1  Lodge's  George  Cabot,  12,  note. 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT  243 

years  as  chairman  of  the  examining  committee 
of  Harvard  Overseers.  He  gave  for  a  single 
year  a  series  of  lectures  on  Kant  at  Harvard 
University,  and  for  a  time  acted  as  instructor 
in  Logic  there,  which  included  a  supervision  of 
the  forensics  or  written  discussions  then  in 
vogue.  The  Civil  War  aroused  his  sympathies 
strongly,  especially  when  his  brother  Edward 
and  his  personal  friend,  Francis  L.  Lee,  became 
respectively  Lieutenant-Colonel  and  Colonel  of 
the  44th  Massachusetts  Volunteer  Infantry. 
Elliot  Cabot  himself  enlisted  in  a  drill  club,  and 
did  some  work  for  the  Sanitary  Commission. 
He  also  assisted  greatly  in  organizing  the  Mu 
seum  of  Fine  Arts  and  in  the  administration  of 
the  Boston  Athenaeum. 

Though  a  life-long  student,  he  wrote  little 
for  the  press,  —  a  fact  which  recalls  Theodore 
Parker's  remark  about  him,  that  he  "  could 
make  a  good  law  argument,  but  could  not  ad 
dress  it  to  the  jury."  He  rendered,  however,  a 
great  and  permanent  service,  far  outweighing 
that  performed  by  most  American  authors  of 
his  time,  as  volunteer  secretary  to  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  a  task  which  constituted  his  main 
occupation  for  five  or  six  years.  After  Emer 
son's  death,  Cabot  also  wrote  his  memoirs,  by 
the  wish  of  the  family,  —  a  book  which  will 
always  remain  the  primary  authority  on  the 


244  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

subject  with  which  it  deals,  although  it  was 
justly  criticised  by  others  for  a  certain  re 
stricted  tone  which  made  it  seem  to  be,  as  it 
really  was,  the  work  of  one  shy  and  reticent 
man  telling  the  story  of  another.  In  describing 
Emerson,  the  biographer  often  unconsciously 
described  himself  also ;  and  the  later  publica 
tions  of  Mr.  Emerson's  only  son  show  clearly 
that  there  was  room  for  a  more  ample  and 
varied  treatment  in  order  to  complete  the  work. 
Under  these  circumstances,  Cabot's  home 
life,  while  of  even  tenor,  was  a  singularly  happy 
one.  One  of  his  strongest  and  life-long  traits 
was  his  love  of  children,  —  a  trait  which  he 
also  eminently  shared  with  Emerson.  The 
group  formed  by  him  with  two  grandchildren 
in  his  lap,  to  whom  he  was  reading  John  Gilpin 
or  Hans  Andersen,  is  one  which  those  who 
knew  him  at  home  would  never  forget.  It  was 
characteristic  also  that  in  his  German  copy  of 
Kant's  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  already 
mentioned,  there  were  found  some  papers  cov 
ered  with  drawings  of  horses  and  carts  which 
had  been  made  to  amuse  some  eager  child. 
Akin  to  this  was  his  strong  love  of  flowers, 
united  with  a  rare  skill  in  making  beautiful 
shrubs  grow  here  and  there  in  such  places  as 
would  bring  out  the  lines  and  curves  of  his 
estate  at  Beverly.  Even  during  the  last  summer 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT  245 

of  his  life,  he  was  cutting  new  little  vistas  on 
the  Beverly  hills.  His  sketches  of  landscape  in 
water-color  were  also  very  characteristic  both 
of  his  delicate  and  poetic  appreciation  of  nature 
and  of  his  skill  and  interest  in  drawing.  In 
1885,  while  in  Italy,  he  used  to  draw  objects 
seen  from  the  car  window  as  he  traveled ;  and 
often  in  the  morning,  when  his  family  came 
down  to  breakfast  at  hotels,  they  found  that  he 
had  already  made  an  exquisite  sketch  in  pencil 
of  some  tower  or  arch. 

His  outward  life,  on  the  whole,  seemed  much 
akin  to  the  lives  led  by  that  considerable  class 
of  English  gentlemen  who  adopt  no  profession, 
dwelling  mainly  on  their  paternal  estates,  yet 
are  neither  politicians  nor  fox-hunters  ;  pursu 
ing  their  own  favorite  studies,  taking  part  from 
time  to  time  in  the  pursuits  of  science,  art,  or 
literature,  even  holding  minor  public  functions, 
but  winning  no  widespread  fame.  He  showed, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  freedom  from  prejudice, 
the  progressive  tendency,  and  the  ideal  proclivi 
ties  which  belong  more  commonly  to  Ameri 
cans.  He  seemed  to  himself  to  have  accom 
plished  nothing ;  and  yet  he  had  indirectly  aided 
a  great  many  men  by  the  elevation  of  his  tone 
and  the  breadth  of  his  intellectual  sympathy. 
If  he  did  not  greatly  help  to  stimulate  the 
thought  of  his  time,  he  helped  distinctly  to  en- 


246  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

large  and  ennoble  it.  His  death  occurred  at 
Brookline,  Massachusetts,  on  January  16,  1903. 
He  died  as  he  had  lived,  a  high-minded,  stain 
less,  and  in  some  respects  unique  type  of  Amer 
ican  citizen. 


XIX 
EMILY   DICKINSON 


EMILY   DICKINSON 

FEW  events  in  American  literary  history  have 
been  more  curious  than  the  sudden  rise  of 
Emily  Dickinson  many  years  since  into  a  post 
humous  fame  only  more  accentuated  by  the 
utterly  recluse  character  of  her  life.  The  lines 
which  formed  a  prelude  to  the  first  volume  of 
her  poems  are  the  only  ones  that  have  yet  come 
to  light  which  indicate  even  a  temporary  desire 
to  come  in  contact  with  the  great  world  of  read 
ers  ;  for  she  seems  to  have  had  no  reference,  in 
all  the  rest,  to  anything  but  her  own  thought 
and  a  few  friends.  But  for  her  only  sister,  it  is 
very  doubtful  if  her  poems  would  ever  have 
been  printed  at  all ;  and  when  published,  they 
were  launched  quietly  and  without  any  expec 
tation  of  a  wide  audience.  Yet  the  outcome 
of  it  was  that  six  editions  of  the  volume  were 
sold  within  six  months,  a  suddenness  of  success 
almost  without  a  parallel  in  American  liter 
ature. 

On  April  16,  1862, 1  took  from  the  post-office 
the  following  letter  :  — 

MR.  HIGGINSON,  —  Are  you  too  deeply  occupied 
to  say  if  my  verse  is  alive  ? 


250  EMILY  DICKINSON 

The  mind  is  so  near  itself  it  cannot  see  distinctly, 
and  I  have  none  to  ask. 

Should  you  think  it  breathed,  and  had  you  the 
leisure  to  tell  me,  I  should  feel  quick  gratitude. 

If  I  make  the  mistake,  that  you  dared  to  tell  me 
would  give  me  sincerer  honor  toward  you. 

I  inclose  my  name,  asking  you,  if  you  please,  sir, 
to  tell  me  what  is  true  ? 

That  you  will  not  betray  me  it  is  needless  to  ask, 
since  honor  is  its  own  pawn. 

The  letter  was  postmarked  "  Amherst,"  and 
it  was  in  a  handwriting  so  peculiar  that  it 
seemed  as  if  the  writer  might  have  taken  her 
first  lessons  by  studying  the  famous  fossil  bird- 
tracks  in  the  museum  of  that  college  town.  Yet 
it  was  not  in  the  slightest  degree  illiterate,  but 
cultivated,  quaint,  and  wholly  unique.  Of  punc 
tuation  there  was  little ;  she  used  chiefly  dashes, 
and  it  has  been  thought  better,  in  printing  these 
letters,  as  with  her  poems,  to  give  them  the 
benefit  in  this  respect  of  the  ordinary  usages ; 
and  so  with  her  habit  as  to  capitalization,  as  the 
printers  call  it,  in  which  she  followed  the  Old 
English  and  present  German  method  of  thus 
distinguishing  every  noun  substantive.  But  the 
most  curious  thing  about  the  letter  was  the 
total  absence  of  a  signature.  It  proved,  how 
ever,  that  she  had  written  her  name  on  a 
card,  and  put  it  under  the  shelter  of  a  smal- 


EMILY  DICKINSON  251 

ler  envelope  inclosed  in  the  larger ;  and  even 
this  name  was  written  —  as  if  the  shy  writer 
wished  to  recede  as  far  as  possible  from  view 
—  in  pencil,  not  in  ink.  The  name  was  Emily 
Dickinson.  Inclosed  with  the  letter  were  four 
poems,  two  of  which  have  since  been  sepa 
rately  printed,  —  "Safe  in  their  alabaster  cham 
bers"  and  "I'll  tell  you  how  the  sun  rose," 
besides  the  two  that  here  follow.  The  first  com 
prises  in  its  eight  lines  a  truth  so  searching 
that  it  seems  a  condensed  summary  of  the 
whole  experience  of  a  long  life  :  — 

"  We  play  at  paste 
Till  qualified  for  pearl ; 
Then  drop  the  paste 
And  deem  ourself  a  fool. 

"  The  shapes,  though,  were  similar 
And  our  new  hands 
Learned  gem-tactics, 
Practicing  sands." 

Then  came  one  which  I  have  always  classed 
among  the  most  exquisite  of  her  productions, 
with  a  singular  felicity  of  phrase  and  an  aerial 
lift  that  bears  the  ear  upward  with  the  bee  it 
traces :  — 

"The  nearest  dream  recedes  unrealized. 
The  heaven  we  chase, 
Like  the  June  bee 


252  EMILY  DICKINSON 

Before  the  schoolboy, 

Invites  the  race, 

Stoops  to  an  easy  clover, 
Dips  —  evades  —  teases  —  deploys  — 
Then  to  the  royal  clouds 

Lifts  his  light  pinnace, 

Heedless  of  the  boy 
Staring,  bewildered,  at  the  mocking  sky. 

"  Homesick  for  steadfast  honey, — 

Ah !  the  bee  flies  not 
Which  brews  that  rare  variety." 

The  impression  of  a  wholly  new  and  original 
poetic  genius  was  as  distinct  on  my  mind  at 
the  first  reading  of  these  four  poems  as  it  is  now, 
after  half  a  century  of  further  knowledge ;  and 
with  it  came  the  problem  never  yet  solved,  what 
place  ought  to  be  assigned  in  literature  to  what 
is  so  remarkable,  yet  so  elusive  of  criticism. 
The  bee  himself  did  not  evade  the  schoolboy 
more  than  she  evaded  me  ;  and  even  at  this  day 
I  still  stand  somewhat  bewildered,  like  the  boy. 

Circumstances,  however,  soon  brought  me  in 
contact  with  an  uncle  of  Emily  Dickinson,  a 
gentleman  not  now  living  :  a  prominent  citizen 
of  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  a  man  of  integrity 
and  character,  who  shared  her  abruptness  and 
impulsiveness,  but  certainly  not  her  poetic  tem 
perament,  from  which  he  was  indeed  singularly 


EMILY  DICKINSON  253 

remote.  He  could  tell  but  little  of  her,  she 
being  evidently  an  enigma  to  him,  as  to  me.  It 
is  hard  to  say  what  answer  was  made  by  me, 
under  these  circumstances,  to  this  letter.  It  is 
probable  that  the  adviser  sought  to  gain  time 
a  little  and  find  out  with  what  strange  creature 
he  was  dealing.  I  remember  to  have  ventured 
on  some  criticism  which  she  afterwards  called 
"  surgery,"  and  on  some  questions,  part  of  which 
she  evaded,  as  will  be  seen,  with  a  nai've  skill 
such  as  the  most  experienced  and  worldly  co 
quette  might  envy.  Her  second  letter  (received 
April  26,  1862)  was  as  follows  :  — 

MR.  HIGGINSON,  — Your  kindness  claimed  earlier 
gratitude,  but  I  was  ill,  and  write  to-day  from  my 
pillow. 

Thank  you  for  the  surgery ;  it  was  not  so  pain 
ful  as  I  supposed.  I  bring  you  others,  as  you  ask, 
though  they  might  not  differ.  While  my  thought  is 
undressed,  I  can  make  the  distinction  ;  but  when  I 
put  them  in  the  gown,  they  look  alike  and  numb. 

You  asked  how  old  I  was  ?  I  made  no  verse,  but 
one  or  two,  until  this  winter,  sir. 

I  had  a  terror  since  September,  I  could  tell  to 
none  ;  and  so  I  sing,  as  the  boy  does  of  the  burying 
ground,  because  I  am  afraid. 

You  inquire  my  books.  For  poets,  I  have  Keats, 
and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning.  For  prose,  Mr. 
Ruskin,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  the  Revelations. 
I  went  to  school,  but  in  your  manner  of  the  phrase 


254  EMILY  DICKINSON 

had  no  education.  When  a  little  girl,  I  had  a  friend 
who  taught  me  Immortality;  but  venturing  too 
near,  himself,  he  never  returned.  Soon  after  my 
tutor  died,  and  for  several  years  my  lexicon  was  my 
only  companion.  Then  I  found  one  more,  but  he 
was  not  contented  I  be  his  scholar,  so  he  left  the 
land. 

You  ask  of  my  companions.  Hills,  sir,  and  the 
sundown,  and  a  dog  large  as  myself,  that  my  father 
bought  me.  They  are  better  than  beings  because 
they  know,  but  do  not  tell ;  and  the  noise  in  the 
pool  at  noon  excels  my  piano. 

I  have  a  brother  and  sister ;  my  mother  does  not 
care  for  thought,  and  father,  too  busy  with  his  briefs 
to  notice  what  we  do.  He  buys  me  many  books,  but 
begs  me  not  to  read  them,  because  he  fears  they 
joggle  the  mind.  They  are  religious,  except  me,  and 
address  an  eclipse,  every  morning,  whom  they  call 
their  "  Father." 

But  I  fear  my  story  fatigues  you.  I  would  like 
to  learn.  Could  you  tell  me  how  to  grow,  or  is  it 
unconveyed,  like  melody  or  witchcraft  ? 

You  speak  of  Mr.  Whitman.  I  never  read  his 
book,  but  was  told  that  it  was  disgraceful. 

I  read  Miss  Prescott's  "  Circumstance,"  but  it 
followed  me  in  the  dark,  so  I  avoided  her. 

Two  editors  of  journals  came  to  my  father's  house 
this  winter,  and  asked  me  for  my  mind,  and  when 
I  asked  them  "why"  they  said  I  was  penurious, 
and  they  would  use  it  for  the  world. 

I  could  not  weigh  myself,  myself.  My  size  felt 


EMILY  DICKINSON  255 

small  to  me.  I  read  your  chapters  in  the  "  Atlantic," 
and  experienced  honor  for  you.  I  was  sure  you 
would  not  reject  a  confiding  question. 

Is  this,  sir,  what  you  asked  me  to  tell  you  ?  Your 
friend,  E.  DICKINSON. 

It  will  be  seen  that  she  had  now  drawn  a 
step  nearer,  signing  her  name,  and  as  my 
"friend."  It  will  also  be  noticed  that  I  had 
sounded  her  about  certain  American  authors, 
then  much  read ;  and  that  she  knew  how  to 
put  her  own  criticisms  in  a  very  trenchant  way. 
With  this  letter  came  some  more  verses,  still 
in  the  same  birdlike  script,  as  for  instance  the 
following :  — 

"  Your  riches  taught  me  poverty, 

Myself  a  millionaire 
In  little  wealths,  as  girls  could  boast, 

Till,  broad  as  Buenos  Ayre, 
You  drifted  your  dominions 

A  different  Peru, 
And  I  esteemed  all  poverty 

For  life's  estate,  with  you. 

"  Of  mines,  I  little  know,  myself, 
But  just  the  names  of  gems, 
The  colors  of  the  commonest, 

And  scarce  of  diadems 
So  much  that,  did  I  meet  the  queen, 
Her  glory  I  should  know ; 


256  EMILY  DICKINSON 

But  this  must  be  a  different  wealth, 
To  miss  it,  beggars  so. 

"  I  'm  sure  't  is  India,  all  day, 

To  those  who  look  on  you 
Without  a  stint,  without  a  blame, 

Might  I  but  be  the  Jew! 
I  'm  sure  it  is  Golconda 

Beyond  my  power  to  deem, 
To  have  a  smile  for  mine,  each  day, 

How  better  than  a  gem  ! 

"  At  least,  it  solaces  to  know 

That  there  exists  a  gold 
Although  I  prove  it  just  in  time 

Its  distance  to  behold ; 
Its  far,  far  treasure  to  surmise 

And  estimate  the  pearl 
That  slipped  my  simple  fingers  through 

While  just  a  girl  at  school !  " 

Here  was  already  manifest  that  defiance  of 
form,  never  through  carelessness,  and  never 
precisely  from  whim,  which  so  marked  her. 
The  slightest  change  in  the  order  of  words  — 
thus,  "While  yet  at  school,  a  girl" — would 
have  given  her  a  rhyme  for  this  last  line ;  but 
no ;  she  was  intent  upon  her  thought,  and  it 
would  not  have  satisfied  her  to  make  the  change. 
The  other  poem  further  showed,  what  had  al 
ready  been  visible,  a  rare  and  delicate  sympathy 
with  the  life  of  nature  :  — 


EMILY  DICKINSON  257 

"  A  bird  came  down  the  walk ; 
He  did  not  know  I  saw ; 
He  bit  an  angle-worm  in  halves 
And  ate  the  fellow  raw. 

"And  then  he  drank  a  dew 
From  a  convenient  grass, 
And  then  hopped  sidewise  to  a  wall, 
To  let  a  beetle  pass. 

"  He  glanced  with  rapid  eyes 
That  hurried  all  around  ; 
They  looked  like  frightened  beads,  I  thought ; 
He  stirred  his  velvet  head 

"  Like  one  in  danger,  cautious. 
I  offered  him  a  crumb, 
And  he  unrolled  his  feathers 
And  rowed  him  softer  home 

"  Than  oars  divide  the  ocean, 
Too  silver  for  a  seam  — 
Or  butterflies,  off  banks  of  noon, 
Leap,  plashless  as  they  swim." 

It  is  possible  that  in  a  second  letter  I  gave 
more  of  distinct  praise  or  encouragement,  as  her 
third  is  in  a  different  mood.  This  was  received 
June  8,  1862.  There  is  something  startling  in 
its  opening  image ;  and  in  the  yet  stranger 
phrase  that  follows,  where  she  apparently  uses 
"mob"  in  the  sense  of  chaos  or  bewilderment : 


258  EMILY  DICKINSON 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Your  letter  gave  no  drunken 
ness,  because  I  tasted  rum  before.  Domingo  comes 
but  once ;  yet  I  have  had  few  pleasures  so  deep  as 
your  opinion,  and  if  I  tried  to  thank  you,  my  tears 
would  block  my  tongue. 

My  dying  tutor  told  me  that  he  would  like  to  live 
till  I  had  been  a  poet,  but  Death  was  much  of  mob 
as  I  could  master,  then.  And  when,  far  afterward, 
a  sudden  light  on  orchards,  or  a  new  fashion  in  the 
wind  troubled  my  attention,  I  felt  a  palsy,  here, 
the  verses  just  relieve. 

Your  second  letter  surprised  me,  and  for  a  mo 
ment,  swung.  I  had  not  supposed  it.  Your  first  gave 
no  dishonor,  because  the  true  are  not  ashamed.  I 
thanked  you  for  your  justice,  but  could  not  drop  the 
bells  whose  jingling  cooled  my  tramp.  Perhaps  the 
balm  seemed  better,  because  you  bled  me  first.  I 
smile  when  you  suggest  that  I  delay  "to  publish," 
that  being  foreign  to  my  thought  as  firmament  to  fin. 

If  fame  belonged  to  me,  I  could  not  escape  her ;  if 
she  did  not,  the  longest  day  would  pass  me  on  the 
chase,  and  the  approbation  of  my  dog  would  forsake 
me  then.  My  barefoot  rank  is  better. 

You  think  my  gait  "  spasmodic."  I  am  in  danger, 
sir.  You  think  me  "  uncontrolled."  I  have  no  tri 
bunal. 

Would  you  have  time  to  be  the  "friend"  you 
should  think  I  need  ?  I  have  a  little  shape  :  it 
would  not  crowd  your  desk,  nor  make  much  racket 
as  the  mouse  that  dens  your  galleries. 

If  I  might  bring  you  what  I  do  —  not  so  frequent 


EMILY  DICKINSON  259 

to  trouble  you — and  ask  you  if  I  told  it  clear, 
't  would  be  control  to  me.  The  sailor  cannot  see  the 
North,  but  knows  the  needle  can.  The  "  hand  you 
stretch  me  in  the  dark  "  I  put  mine  in,  and  turn  away. 
I  have  no  Saxon  now  :  — 

As  if  I  asked  a  common  alms, 
And  in  my  wandering  hand 
A  stranger  pressed  a  kingdom, 
And  I,  bewildered,  stand  ; 
As  if  I  asked  the  Orient 
Had  it  for  me  a  morn, 
And  it  should  lift  its  purple  dikes 
And  shatter  me  with  dawn  ! 

But,  will  you  be  my  preceptor,  Mr.  Higginson  ? 

With  this  came  the  poem  since  published  in 
one  of  her  volumes  and  entitled  "  Renunciation  " ; 
and  also  that  beginning  "  Of  all  the  sounds  dis 
patched  abroad/'  thus  fixing  approximately  the 
date  of  those  two.  I  must  soon  have  written  to 
ask  her  for  her  picture,  that  I  might  form  some 
impression  of  my  enigmatical  correspondent.  To 
this  came  the  following  reply,  in  July,  1862:  — 

Could  you  believe  me  without  ?  I  had  no  portrait, 
now,  but  am  small,  like  the  wren  ;  and  my  hair  is  bold 
like  the  chestnut  bur ;  and  my  eyes,  like  the  sherry 
in  the  glass,  that  the  guest  leaves.  Would  this  do 
just  as  well  ? 

It  often  alarms  father.  He  says  death  might  occur 
and  he  has  moulds  of  all  the  rest,  but  has  no  mould 


260  EMILY  DICKINSON 

of  me  ;  but  I  noticed  the  quick  wore  off  those  things, 
in  a  few  days,  and  forestall  the  dishonor.  You  will 
think  no  caprice  of  me. 

You  said  "  Dark."  I  know  the  butterfly,  and  the 
lizard,  and  the  orchis.  Are  not  those  your  country 
men  ? 

I  am  happy  to  be  your  scholar,  and  will  deserve 
the  kindness  I  cannot  repay. 

If  you  truly  consent,  I  recite  now.  Will  you  tell 
me  my  fault,  frankly  as  to  yourself,  for  I  had  rather 
wince  than  die.  Men  do  not  call  the  surgeon  to  com 
mend  the  bone,  but  to  set  it,  sir,  and  fracture  within 
is  more  critical.  And  for  this,  preceptor,  I  shall  bring 
you  obedience,  the  blossom  from  my  garden,  and 
every  gratitude  I  know. 

Perhaps  you  smile  at  me.  I  could  not  stop  for  that. 
My  business  is  circumference.  An  ignorance,  not  of 
customs,  but  if  caught  with  the  dawn,  or  the  sunset 
see  me,  myself  the  only  kangaroo  among  the  beauty, 
sir,  if  you  please,  it  afflicts  me,  and  I  thought  that 
instruction  would  take  it  away. 

Because  you  have  much  business,  beside  the 
growth  of  me,  you  will  appoint,  yourself,  how  often 
I  shall  come,  without  your  inconvenience. 

And  if  at  any  time  you  regret  you  received  me,  or 
I  prove  a  different  fabric  to  that  you  supposed,  you 
must  banish  me. 

When  I  state  myself,  as  the  representative  of  the 
verse,  it  does  not  mean  me,  but  a  supposed  person. 

You  are  true  about  the  "perfection."  To-day 
makes  Yesterday  mean. 


EMILY  DICKINSON  261 

You  spoke  of  "  Pippa  Passes."  I  never  heard  any 
body  speak  of  "  Pippa  Passes  "  before.  You  see  my 
posture  is  benighted. 

To  thank  you  baffles  me.  Are  you  perfectly  power 
ful  ?  Had  I  a  pleasure  you  had  not,  I  could  delight 
to  bring  it.  YOUR  SCHOLAR. 

This  was  accompanied  by  this  strong  poem, 
with  its  breathless  conclusion.  The  title  is  of  my 
own  giving  :  — 

THE    SAINTS'    REST 

Of  tribulation,  these  are  they, 

Denoted  by  the  white  ; 
The  spangled  gowns,  a  lesser  rank 

Of  victors  designate. 

All  these  did  conquer  ;  but  the  ones 

Who  overcame  most  times, 
Wear  nothing  commoner  than  snow, 

No  ornaments  but  palms. 

"  Surrender  "  is  a  sort  unknown 

On  this  superior  soil ; 
"  Defeat "  an  outgrown  anguish, 

Remembered  as  the  mile 

Our  panting  ancle  barely  passed 
When  night  devoured  the  road  ; 

But  we  stood  whispering  in  the  house, 

And  all  we  said,  was  "  Saved  !  " 
[Note  by  the  writer  of  the  verses.]  I  spelled  ankle  wrong. 


262  EMILY  DICKINSON 

It  would  seem  that  at  first  I  tried  a  little  —  a 
very  little  —  to  lead  her  in  the  direction  of  rules 
and  traditions  ;  but  I  fear  it  was  only  perfunc 
tory,  and  that  she  interested  me  more  in  her  — 
so  to  speak — unregenerate  condition.  Still,  she 
recognizes  the  endeavor.  In  this  case,  as  will  be 
seen,  I  called  her  attention  to  the  fact  that  while 
she  took  pains  to  correct  the  spelling  of  a  word, 
she  was  utterly  careless  of  greater  irregularities. 
It  will  be  seen  by  her  answer  that  with  her  usual 
naive  adroitness  she  turns  my  point :  — 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Are  these  more  orderly?  I 
thank  you  for  the  truth. 

I  had  no  monarch  in  my  life,  and  cannot  rule 
myself ;  and  when  I  try  to  organize,  my  little  force 
explodes  and  leaves  me  bare  and  charred. 

I  think  you  called  me  "  wayward."  Will  you  help 
me  improve  ? 

I  suppose  the  pride  that  stops  the  breath,  in  the 
core  of  woods,  is  not  of  ourself. 

You  say  I  confess  the  little  mistake,  and  omit  the 
large.  Because  I  can  see  orthography ;  but  the  igno 
rance  out  of  sight  is  my  preceptor's  charge. 

Of  "  shunning  men  and  women,"  they  talk  of  hal 
lowed  things,  aloud,  and  embarrass  my  dog.  He  and 
I  don't  object  to  them,  if  they  '11  exist  their  side. 
I  think  Carlo  would  please  you.  He  is  dumb,  and 
brave.  I  think  you  would  like  the  chestnut  tree 
I  met  in  my  walk.  It  hit  my  notice  suddenly,  and  I 
thought  the  skies  were  in  blossom. 


EMILY  DICKINSON  263 

Then  there  's  a  noiseless  noise  in  the  orchard  that 
I  let  persons  hear. 

You  told  me  in  one  letter  you  could  not  come  to 
see  me  "  now,"  and  I  made  no  answer  ;  not  because 
I  had  none,  but  did  not  think  myself  the  price  that 
you  should  come  so  far. 

I  do  not  ask  so  large  a  pleasure,  lest  you  might 
deny  me. 

You  say,  "  Beyond  your  knowledge."  You  would 
not  jest  with  me,  because  I  believe  you ;  but,  pre 
ceptor,  you  cannot  mean  it  ? 

All  men  say  "  What "  to  me,  but  I  thought  it  a 
fashion. 

When  much  in  the  woods,  as  a  little  girl,  I  was 
told  that  the  snake  would  bite  me,  that  I  might  pick 
a  poisonous  flower,  or  goblins  kidnap  me  ;  but  I  went 
along  and  met  no  one  but  angels,  who  were  far  shyer 
of  me  than  I  could  be  of  them,  so  I  have  n't  that 
confidence  in  fraud  which  many  exercise. 

I  shall  observe  your  precept,  though  I  don't 
understand  it,  always. 

I  marked  a  line  in  one  verse,  because  I  met  it 
after  I  made  it,  and  never  consciously  touch  a  paint 
mixed  by  another  person. 

I  do  not  let  go  it,  because  it  is  mine.  Have  you 
the  portrait  of  Mrs.  Browning  ? 

Persons  sent  me  three.  If  you  had  none,  will  you 
have  mine  ?  YOUR  SCHOLAR. 

A  month  or  two  after  this  I  entered  the  vol 
unteer  army  of  the  Civil  War,  and  must  have 


264  EMILY  DICKINSON 

written  to  her  during  the  winter  of  1862-63 
from  South  Carolina  or  Florida,  for  the  follow 
ing  reached  me  in  camp  :  — 

AMHERST. 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  did  not  deem  that  planetary 
forces  annulled,  but  suffered  an  exchange  of  terri 
tory,  or  world. 

I  should  have  liked  to  see  you  before  you  be 
came  improbable.  War  feels  to  me  an  oblique  place. 
Should  there  be  other  summers,  would  you  perhaps 
come  ? 

I  found  you  were  gone,  by  accident,  as  I  find  sys 
tems  are,  or  seasons  of  the  year,  and  obtain  no  cause, 
but  suppose  it  a  treason  of  progress  that  dissolves 
as  it  goes.  Carlo  still  remained,  and  I  told  him. 

Best  gains  must  have  the  losses'  test, 
To  constitute  them  gains. 

My  shaggy  ally  assented. 

Perhaps  death  gave  me  awe  for  friends,  striking 
sharp  and  early,  for  I  held  them  since  in  a  brittle 
love,  of  more  alarm  than  peace.  I  trust  you  may 
pass  the  limit  of  war ;  and  though  not  reared  to 
prayer,  when  service  is  had  in  church  for  our  arms, 
I  include  yourself.  ...  I  was  thinking  to-day,  as  I 
noticed,  that  the  "Supernatural  "  was  only  the  Nat 
ural  disclosed. 

Not  "  Revelation  "  't  is  that  waits, 
But  our  unfurnished  eyes. 

But  I  fear  I  detain  you.  Should  you,  before  this 
reaches  you,  experience  immortality,  who  will  inform 


EMILY  DICKINSON  265 

me  of  the  exchange  ?  Could  you,  with  honor,  avoid 
death,  I  entreat  you,  sir.  It  would  bereave 

YOUR  GNOME. 

I  trust  the  "  Procession  of  Flowers ''  was  not  a 
premonition. 

I  cannot  explain  this  extraordinary  signa 
ture,  substituted  for  the  now  customary  "  Your 
Scholar,"  unless  she  imagined  her  friend  to  be 
in  some  incredible  and  remote  condition,  im 
parting  its  strangeness  to  her.  Swedenborg 
somewhere  has  an  image  akin  to  her  "  oblique 
place,"  where  he  symbolizes  evil  as  simply  an 
oblique  angle.  With  this  letter  came  verses, 
most  refreshing  in  that  clime  of  jasmines  and 
mockingbirds,  on  the  familiar  robin:  — 

THE   ROBIN 

The  robin  is  the  one 
That  interrupts  the  morn 
With  hurried,  few,  express  reports 
When  March  is  scarcely  on. 

The  robin  is  the  one 
That  overflows  the  noon 
With  her  cherubic  quantity, 
An  April  but  begun. 

The  robin  is  the  one 
That,  speechless  from  her  nest, 
Submits  that  home  and  certainty 
And  sanctity  are  best. 


266  EMILY  DICKINSON 

In  the  summer  of  1863  I  was  wounded,  and 
in  hospital  for  a  time,  during  which  came  this 
letter  in  pencil,  written  from  what  was  practi 
cally  a  hospital  for  her,  though  only  for  weak 
eyes  :  — 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Are  you  in  danger  ?  I  did  not 
know  that  you  were  hurt.  Will  you  tell  me  more? 
Mr.  Hawthorne  died. 

I  was  ill  since  September,  and  since  April  in 
Boston  for  a  physician's  care.  He  does  not  let  me 
go,  yet  I  work  in  my  prison,  and  make  guests  for 
myself. 

Carlo  did  not  come,  because  that  he  would  die  in 
jail ;  and  the  mountains  I  could  not  hold  now,  so  I 
brought  but  the  Gods. 

I  wish  to  see  you  more  than  before  I  failed.  Will 
you  tell  me  your  health  ?  I  am  surprised  and  anxious 
since  receiving  your  note. 

The  only  news  I  know 
Is  bulletins  all  day 
From  Immortality. 

Can  you  render  my  pencil  ?  The  physician  has 
taken  away  my  pen. 

I  inclose  the  address  from  a  letter,  lest  my  figures 
fail. 

Knowledge  of  your  recovery  would  excel  my 
own. 

E.  DICKINSON. 

Later  this  arrived  :  — 


EMILY  DICKINSON  267 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  think  of  you  so  wholly  that  I 
cannot  resist  to  write  again,  to  ask  if  you  are  safe  ? 
Danger  is  not  at  first,  for  then  we  are  unconscious, 
but  in  the  after,  slower  days. 

Do  not  try  to  be  saved,  but  let  redemption  find 
you,  as  it  certainly  will.  Love  is  its  own  rescue ; 
for  we,  at  our  supremest,  are  but  its  trembling  em 
blems. 

YOUR  SCHOLAR. 

These  were  my  earliest  letters  from  Emily 
Dickinson,  in  their  order.  From  this  time  and 
up  to  her  death  (May  15,  1886)  we  corresponded 
at  varying  intervals,  she  always  persistently 
keeping  up  this  attitude  of  "Scholar,"  and 
assuming  on  my  part  a  preceptorship  which  it 
is  almost  needless  to  say  did  not  exist.  Always 
glad  to  hear  her  "recite,"  as  she  called  it,  t 
soon  abandoned  all  attempt  to  guide  in  the 
slightest  degree  this  extraordinary  nature,  and 
simply  accepted  her  confidences,  giving  as 
much  as  I  could  of  what  might  interest  her  in 
return. 

Sometimes  there  would  be  a  long  pause,  on 
my  part,  after  which  would  come  a  plaintive  let 
ter,  always  terse,  like  this  :  — 

"  Did  I  displease  you  ?  But  won't  you  tell  me 
how  ? " 

Or  perhaps  the  announcement  of  some  event, 
vast  in  her  small  sphere,  as  this  :  — 


268  EMILY  DICKINSON 

AMHERST. 

Carlo  died.  E.  DICKINSON. 

Would  you  instruct  me  now  ? 

Or  sometimes  there  would  arrive  an  exquisite 
little  detached  strain,  every  word  a  picture,  like 
this  :  — 

THE   HUMMING-BIRD 

A  route  of  evanescence 
With  a  revolving  wheel ; 
A  resonance  of  emerald ; 
A  rush  of  cochineal. 
And  every  blossom  on  the  bush 
Adjusts  its  tumbled  head  ;  — 
The  mail  from  Tunis,  probably, 
An  easy  morning's  ride. 

Nothing  in  literature,  I  am  sure,  so  condenses 
into  a  few  words  that  gorgeous  atom  of  life  and 
fire  of  which  she  here  attempts  the  description. 
It  is,  however,  needless  to  conceal  that  many 
of  her  brilliant  fragments  were  less  satisfying. 
She  almost  always  grasped  whatever  she  sought, 
but  with  some  fracture  of  grammar  and  diction 
ary  on  the  way.  Often,  too,  she  was  obscure,  and 
sometimes  inscrutable ;  and  though  obscurity 
is  sometimes,  in  Coleridge's  phrase,  a  compli 
ment  to  the  reader,  yet  it  is  never  safe  to  press 
this  compliment  too  hard. 

Sometimes,  on  the  other  hand,  her  verses 
found  too  much  favor  for  her  comfort,  and  she 


EMILY  DICKINSON  269 

was  urged  to  publish.  In  such  cases  I  was  some 
times  put  forward  as  a  defense ;  and  the  follow 
ing  letter  was  the  fruit  of  some  such  occasion : 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Thank  you  for  the  advice.  I 
shall  implicitly  follow  it. 

The  one  who  asked  me  for  the  lines  I  had  never 
seen. 

He  spoke  of  "a  charity."  I  refused,  but  did  not 
inquire.  He  again  earnestly  urged,  on  the  ground 
that  in  that  way  I  might  "  aid  unfortunate  children." 
The  name  of  "  child  "  was  a  snare  to  me,  and  I  hesi 
tated,  choosing  my  most  rudimentary,  and  without 
criterion. 

I  inquired  of  you.  You  can  scarcely  estimate  the 
opinion  to  one  utterly  guideless.  Again  thank  you. 

YOUR  SCHOLAR. 

Again  came  this,  on  a  similar  theme  :  — 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Are  you  willing  to  tell  me  what 
is  right  ?  Mrs.  Jackson,  of  Colorado  ["  H.  H.,"  her 
early  schoolmate],  was  with  me  a  few  moments  this 
week,  and  wished  me  to  write  for  this.  [A  circular 
of  the  "  No  Name  Series  "  was  inclosed.]  I  told  her 
I  was  unwilling,  and  she  asked  me  why  ?  I  said  I 
was  incapable,  and  she  seemed  not  to  believe  me 
and  asked  me  not  to  decide  for  a  few  days.  Mean 
time,  she  would  write  me.  She  was  so  sweetly  noble, 
I  would  regret  to  estrange  her,  and  if  you  would  be 
willing  to  give  me  a  note  saying  you  disapproved  it, 
and  thought  me  unfit,  she  would  believe  you.  I  am 


270  EMILY  DICKINSON 

sorry  to  flee  so  often  to  my  safest  friend,  but  hope 
he  permits  me. 

In  all  this  time  —  nearly  eight  years  —  we 
had  never  met,  but  she  had  sent  invitations  like 

the  following :  — 

AMHERST. 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Whom  my  dog  understood  could 
not  elude  others. 

I  should  be  so  glad  to  see  you,  but  think  it  an 
apparitional  pleasure,  not  to  be  fulfilled.  I  am  un 
certain  of  Boston. 

I  had  promised  to  visit  my  physician  for  a  few 
days  in  May,  but  father  objects  because  he  is  in  the 
habit  of  me. 

Is  it  more  far  to  Amherst  ? 

You  will  find  a  minute  host,  but  a  spacious  wel 
come.  .  .  . 

If  I  still  entreat  you  to  teach  me,  are  you  much 
displeased  ?  I  will  be  patient,  constant,  never  reject 
your  knife,  and  should  my  slowness  goad  you,  you 
knew  before  myself  that 

Except  the  smaller  size 
No  lives  are  round. 
These  hurry  to  a  sphere 
And  show  and  end. 
The  larger  slower  grow 
And  later  hang  ; 
The  summers  of  Hesperides 
Are  long. 

Afterwards,  came  this  :  — 


EMILY  DICKINSON  271 

AMHERST. 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  A  letter  always  feels  to  me  like 
immortality  because  it  is  the  mind  alone  without 
corporeal  friend.  Indebted  in  our  talk  to  attitude 
and  accent,  there  seems  a  spectral  power  in  thought 
that  walks  alone.  I  would  like  to  thank  you  for  your 
great  kindness,  but  never  try  to  lift  the  words  which 
I  cannot  hold. 

Should  you  come  to  Amherst,  I  might  then  suc 
ceed,  though  gratitude  is  the  timid  wealth  of  those 
who  have  nothing.  I  am  sure  that  you  speak  the 
truth,  because  the  noble  do,  but  your  letters  always 
surprise  me. 

My  life  has  been  too  simple  and  stern  to  embar 
rass  any.  "  Seen  of  Angels,"  scarcely  my  responsi 
bility. 

It  is  difficult  not  to  be  fictitious  in  so  fair  a  place, 
but  tests'  severe  repairs  are  permitted  all. 

When  a  little  girl  I  remember  hearing  that  re 
markable  passage  and  preferring  the  "  Power,"  not 
knowing  at  the  time  that  "  Kingdom  "  and  "  Glory  " 
were  included. 

You  noticed  my  dwelling  alone.  To  an  emigrant, 
country  is  idle  except  it  be  his  own.  You  speak 
kindly  of  seeing  me;  could  it  please  your  conven 
ience  to  come  so  far  as  Amherst,  I  should  be  very 
glad,  but  I  do  not  cross  my  father's  ground  to  any 
house  or  town. 

Of  our  greatest  acts  we  are  ignorant.  You  were 
not  aware  that  you  saved  my  life.  To  thank  you  in 
person  has  been  since  then  one  of  my  few  requests. 


272  EMILY  DICKINSON 

.  .  .  You  will  excuse  each  that  I  say,  because  no 
one  taught  me. 

At  last,  after  many  postponements,  on  Au 
gust  1 6,  1870,  I  found  myself  face  to  face  with 
my  hitherto  unseen  correspondent.  It  was  at 
her  father's  house,  one  of  those  large,  square, 
brick  mansions  so  familiar  in  our  older  New 
England  towns,  surrounded  by  trees  and  blos 
soming  shrubs  without,  and  within  exquisitely 
neat,  cool,  spacious,  and  fragrant  with  flowers. 
After  a  little  delay,  I  heard  an  extremely  faint 
and  pattering  footstep  like  that  of  a  child,  in  the 
hall,  and  in  glided,  almost  noiselessly,  a  plain, 
shy  little  person,  the  face  without  a  single  good 
feature,  but  with  eyes,  as  she  herself  said,  "  like 
the  sherry  the  guest  leaves  in  the  glass,"  and 
with  smooth  bands  of  reddish  chestnut  hair. 
She  had  a  quaint  and  nun-like  look,  as  if  she 
might  be  a  German  canoness  of  some  religious 
order,  whose  prescribed  garb  was  white  pique, 
with  a  blue  net  worsted  shawl.  She  came  toward 
me  with  two  day-lilies,  which  she  put  in  a  child 
like  way  into  my  hand,  saying  softly,  under  her 
breath,  "These  are  my  introduction,"  and  add 
ing,  also  under  her  breath,  in  childlike  fashion, 
"Forgive  me  if  I  am  frightened;  I  never  see 
strangers,  and  hardly  know  what  I  say."  But 
soon  she  began  to  talk,  and  thenceforward  con- 


EMILY  DICKINSON  273 

tinued  almost  constantly ;  pausing  sometimes 
to  beg  that  I  would  talk  instead,  but  readily 
recommencing  when  I  evaded.  There  was  not 
a  trace  of  affectation  in  all  this ;  she  seemed  to 
speak  absolutely  for  her  own  relief,  and  wholly 
without  watching  its  effect  on  her  hearer.  Led 
on  by  me,  she  told  much  about  her  early  life, 
in  which  her  father  was  always  the  chief  figure, 
—  evidently  a  man  of  the  old  type,  la  vieille 
roche  of  Puritanism,  —  a  man  who,  as  she  said, 
read  on  Sunday  "  lonely  and  rigorous  books  "  ; 
and  who  had  from  childhood  inspired  her  with 
such  awe,  that  she  never  learned  to  tell  time 
by  the  clock  till  she  was  fifteen,  simply  because 
he  had  tried  to  explain  it  to  her  when  she  was 
a  little  child,  and  she  had  been  afraid  to  tell  him 
that  she  did  not  understand,  and  also  afraid  to 
ask  any  one  else  lest  he  should  hear  of  it.  Yet 
she  had  never  heard  him  speak  a  harsh  word, 
and  it  needed  only  a  glance  at  his  photograph 
to  see  how  truly  the  Puritan  tradition  was  pre 
served  in  him.  He  did  not  wish  his  children, 
when  little,  to  read  anything  but  the  Bible  ;  and 
when,  one  day,  her  brother  brought  her  home 
Longfellow's  "Kavanagh,"  he  put  it  secretly 
under  the  pianoforte  cover,  made  signs  to  her, 
and  they  both  afterwards  read  it.  It  may  have 
been  before  this,  however,  that  a  student  of  her 
father's  was  amazed  to  find  that  she  and  her 


274  EMILY  DICKINSON 

brother  had  never  heard  of  Lydia  Maria  Child, 
then  much  read,  and  he  brought  "  Letters  from 
New  York,"  and  hid  it  in  the  great  bush  of  old- 
fashioned  tree-box  beside  the  front  door.  After 
the  first  book,  she  thought  in  ecstasy,  "This, 
then,  is  a  book,  and  there  are  more  of  them." 
But  she  did  not  find  so  many  as  she  expected, 
for  she  afterwards  said  to  me,  "  When  I  lost  the 
use  of  my  eyes,  it  was  a  comfort  to  think  that 
there  were  so  few  real  books  that  I  could  easily 
find  one  to  read  me  all  of  them."  Afterwards, 
when  she  regained  her  eyes,  she  read  Shake 
speare,  and  thought  to  herself,  "Why  is  any 
other  book  needed? " 

She  went  on  talking  constantly  and  saying, 
in  the  midst  of  narrative,  things  quaint  and 
aphoristic.  "  Is  it  oblivion  or  absorption  when 
things  pass  from  our  minds  ? "  "  Truth  is  such 
a  rare  thing,  it  is  delightful  to  tell  it."  "  I  find 
ecstasy  in  living ;  the  mere  sense  of  living  is 
joy  enough."  When  I  asked  her  if  she  never 
felt  any  want  of  employment,  not  going  off  the 
grounds  and  rarely  seeing  a  visitor,  she  an 
swered,  "  I  never  thought  of  conceiving  that  I 
could  ever  have  the  slightest  approach  to  such 
a  want  in  all  future  time  "  ;  and  then  added, 
after  a  pause,  "  I  feel  that  I  have  not  expressed 
myself  strongly  enough,"  although  it  seemed  to 
me  that  she  had.  She  told  me  of  her  household 


EMILY  DICKINSON  275 

occupations,  that  she  made  all  their  bread,  be 
cause  her  father  liked  only  hers ;  then  saying 
shyly,  "  And  people  must  have  puddings,"  this 
very  timidly  and  suggestively,  as  if  they  were 
meteors  or  comets.  Interspersed  with  these 
confidences  came  phrases  so  emphasized  as  to 
seem  the  very  wantonness  of  over-statement, 
as  if  she  pleased  herself  with  putting  into  words 
what  the  most  extravagant  might  possibly  think 
without  saying,  as  thus  :  "  How  do  most  people 
live  without  any  thoughts  ?  There  are  many 
people  in  the  world, — you  must  have  noticed 
them  in  the  street,  —  how  do  they  live?  How 
do  they  get  strength  to  put  on  their  clothes  in 
the  morning  ?  "  Or  this  crowning  extravaganza  : 
"  If  I  read  a  book  and  it  makes  my  whole  body 
so  cold  no  fire  can  ever  warm  me,  I  know  that 
is  poetry.  If  I  feel  physically  as  if  the  top  of 
my  head  were  taken  off,  I  know  that  is  poetry. 
These  are  the  only  ways  I  know  it.  Is  there 
any  other  way  ? " 

I  have  tried  to  describe  her  just  as  she  was, 
with  the  aid  of  notes  taken  at  the  time  ;  but  this 
interview  left  our  relation  very  much  what  it 
was  before ;  —  on  my  side  an  interest  that  was 
strong  and  even  affectionate,  but  not  based  on 
any  thorough  comprehension ;  and  on  her  side  a 
hope,  always  rather  baffled,  that  I  should  afford 
some  aid  in  solving  her  abstruse  problem  of  life. 


276  EMILY  DICKINSON 

The  impression  undoubtedly  made  on  me  was 
that  of  an  excess  of  tension,  and  of  something 
abnormal.  Perhaps  in  time  I  could  have  got 
beyond  that  somewhat  overstrained  relation 
which  not  my  will,  but  her  needs,  had  forced 
upon  us.  Certainly  I  should  have  been  most 
glad  to  bring  it  down  to  the  level  of  simple  truth 
and  every-day  comradeship ;  but  it  was  not 
altogether  easy.  She  was  much  too  enigmatical 
a  being  for  me  to  solve  in  an  hour's  interview, 
and  an  instinct  told  me  that  the  slightest  at 
tempt  at  direct  cross-examination  would  make 
her  withdraw  into  her  shell ;  I  could  only  sit 
still  and  watch,  as  one  does  in  the  woods ;  I 
must  name  my  bird  without  a  gun,  as  recom 
mended  by  Emerson. 

After  my  visit  came  this  letter :  — 

Enough  is  so  vast  a  sweetness,  I  suppose  it  never 
occurs,  only  pathetic  counterfeits. 

Fabulous  to  me  as  the  men  of  the  Revelations 
who  "shall  not  hunger  any  more."  Even  the  possi 
ble  has  its  insoluble  particle. 

After  you  went,  I  took  "  Macbeth  "  and  turned  to 
"Birnam  Wood."  Came  twice  "To  Dunsinane."  I 
thought  and  went  about  my  work.  .  .  . 

The  vein  cannot  thank  the  artery,  but  her  sol 
emn  indebtedness  to  him,  even  the  stolidest  ad 
mit,  and  so  of  me  who  try,  whose  effort  leaves  no 
sound. 

You   ask  great  questions   accidentally.  To  an- 


EMILY  DICKINSON  277 

swer  them  would  be  events.  I  trust  that  you  are 
safe. 

I  ask  you  to  forgive  me  for  all  the  ignorance  I  had. 
I  find  no  nomination  sweet  as  your  low  opinion. 

Speak,  if  but  to  blame  your  obedient  child. 

You  told  me  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  poems.  Would 
you  tell  me  where  I  could  find  them,  or  are  they 
not  for  sight  ?  An  article  of  yours,  too,  perhaps  the 
only  one  you  wrote  that  I  never  knew.  It  was  about 
a  "Latch."  Are  you  willing  to  tell  me?  [Perhaps 
"  A  Sketch."] 

If  I  ask  too  much,  you  could  please  refuse.  Short 
ness  to  live  has  made  me  bold. 

Abroad  is  close  to-night  and  I  have  but  to  lift 
my  hands  to  touch  the  "  Heights  of  Abraham." 

DICKINSON. 

When  I  said,  at  parting,  that  I  would  come 
again  some  time,  she  replied,  "  Say,  in  a  long 
time ;  that  will  be  nearer.  Some  time  is  no 
time."  We  met  only  once  again,  and  I  have  no 
express  record  of  the  visit.  We  corresponded 
for  years,  at  long  intervals,  her  side  of  the  in 
tercourse  being,  I  fear,  better  sustained  ;  and 
she  sometimes  wrote  also  to  my  wife,  inclosing 
flowers  or  fragrant  leaves  with  a  verse  or  two. 
Once  she  sent  her  one  of  George  Eliot's  books, 
I  think  " Middlemarch,"  and  wrote,  "I  am 
bringing  you  a  little  granite  book  for  you  to 
lean  upon."  At  other  times  she  would  send 
single  poems,  such  as  these  :  — 


278  EMILY  DICKINSON 

THE   BLUE  JAY 

No  brigadier  throughout  the  year 

So  civic  as  the  jay. 

A  neighbor  and  a  warrior  too, 

With  shrill  felicity 

Pursuing  winds  that  censure  us 

A  February  Day, 

The  brother  of  the  universe 

Was  never  blown  away. 

The  snow  and  he  are  intimate ; 

I  Ve  often  seen  them  play 

When  heaven  looked  upon  us  all 

With  such  severity 

I  felt  apology  were  due 

To  an  insulted  sky 

Whose  pompous  frown  was  nutriment 

To  their  temerity. 

The  pillow  of  this  daring  head 

Is  pungent  evergreens ; 

His  larder  —  terse  and  militant  — 

Unknown,  refreshing  things ; 

His  character  —  a  tonic ; 

His  future  —  a  dispute  ; 

Unfair  an  immortality 

That  leaves  this  neighbor  out. 

THE   WHITE   HEAT 

Dare  you  see  a  soul  at  the  white  heat  ? 

Then  crouch  within  the  door ; 
Red  is  the  fire's  common  tint, 

But  when  the  vivid  ore 


EMILY  DICKINSON  279 

Has  sated  flame's  conditions, 
Its  quivering  substance  plays 

Without  a  color,  but  the  light 
Of  unanointed  blaze. 

Least  village  boasts  its  blacksmith, 

Whose  anvil's  even  din 
Stands  symbol  for  the  finer  forge 

That  soundless  tugs  within, 

Refining  these  impatient  ores 
With  hammer  and  with  blaze, 

Until  the  designated  light 
Repudiate  the  forge. 

Then  came  the  death  of  her  father,  that 
strong  Puritan  father  who  had  communicated 
to  her  so  much  of  the  vigor  of  his  own  nature, 
and  who  bought  her  many  books,  but  begged 
her  not  to  read  them.  Mr.  Edward  Dickinson, 
after  service  in  the  national  House  of  Repre 
sentatives  and  other  public  positions,  had  be 
come  a  member  of  the  lower  house  of  the 
Massachusetts  legislature.  The  session  was  un 
usually  prolonged,  and  he  was  making  a  speech 
upon  some  railway  question  at  noon,  one  very 
hot  day  (July  16,  1874),  when  he  became  sud 
denly  faint  and  sat  down.  The  house  adjourned, 
and  a  friend  walked  with  him  to  his  lodgings 
at  the  Tremont  House,  where  he  began  to  pack 
his  bag  for  home,  after  sending  for  a  physician, 


280  EMILY  DICKINSON 

but  died  within  three  hours.  Soon  afterwards,  I 
received  the  following  letter  :  — 

The  last  Afternoon  that  my  father  lived,  though 
with  no  premonition,  I  preferred  to  be  with  him, 
and  invented  an  absence  for  mother,  Vinnie  [her 
sister]  being  asleep.  He  seemed  peculiarly  pleased, 
as  I  oftenest  stayed  with  myself ;  and  remarked, 
as  the  afternoon  withdrew,  he  "  would  like  it  to  not 
end." 

His  pleasure  almost  embarrassed  me,  and  my 
brother  coming,  I  suggested  they  walk.  Next  morn 
ing  I  woke  him  for  the  train,  and  saw  him  no 
more. 

His  heart  was  pure  and  terrible,  and  I  think  no 
other  like  it  exists. 

I  am  glad  there  is  immortality,  but  would  have 
tested  it  myself,  before  entrusting  him.  Mr.  Bowles 
was  with  us.  With  that  exception,  I  saw  none.  I 
have  wished  for  you,  since  my  father  died,  and  had 
you  an  hour  unengrossed,  it  would  be  almost  price 
less.  Thank  you  for  each  kindness.  .  .  . 

Later  she  wrote  :  — 

When  I  think  of  my  father's  lonely  life  and 
lonelier  death,  there  is  this  redress  — 

Take  all  away  ; 

The  only  thing  worth  larceny 

Is  left  —  the  immortality. 

My  earliest  friend  wrote  me  the  week  before  he 


EMILY  DICKINSON  281 

died,  "  If  I  live,  I  will  go  to  Amherst ;  if  I  die, 
I  certainly  will." 

Is  your  house  deeper  off  ?        YOUR  SCHOLAR. 

A  year  afterwards  came  this  :  — 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Mother  was  paralyzed  Tues 
day,  a  year  from  the  evening  father  died.  I  thought 
perhaps  you  would  care.  YOUR  SCHOLAR. 

With  this  came  the  following  verse,  having 
a  curious  seventeenth-century  flavor  :  — 

"  A  death-blow  is  a  life-blow  to  some, 
Who,  till  they  died,  did  not  alive  become  ; 
Who,  had  they  lived,  had  died,  but  when 
They  died,  vitality  begun." 

And  later  came  this  kindred  memorial  of  one 
of  the  oldest  and  most  faithful  friends  of  the 
family,  Mr.  Samuel  Bowles,  of  the  Springfield 
"  Republican  "  :  — 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  felt  it  shelter  to  speak  to 
you. 

My  brother  and  sister  are  with  Mr.  Bowles,  who 
is  buried  this  afternoon. 

The  last  song  that  I  heard  —  that  was,  since  the 
birds — was  "He  leadeth  me,  he  leadeth  me;  yea, 
though  I  walk  "  —  then  the  voices  stooped,  the  arch 
was  so  low. 

After  this  added  bereavement  the  inward  life 
of  the  diminished  household  became  only  more 


282        .  EMILY  DICKINSON 

concentrated,  and  the  world  was  held  farther 
and  farther  away.  Yet  to  this  period  belongs 
the  following  letter,  written  about  1880,  which 
has  more  of  what  is  commonly  called  the  ob 
jective  or  external  quality  than  any  she  ever 
wrote  me ;  and  shows  how  close  might  have 
been  her  observation  and  her  sympathy,  had 
her  rare  qualities  taken  a  somewhat  different 
channel :  — 

DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  was  touchingly  reminded  of 
[a  child  who  had  died]  this  morning  by  an  Indian 
woman  with  gay  baskets  and  a  dazzling  baby,  at 
the  kitchen  door.  Her  little  boy  "  once  died,"  she 
said,  death  to  her  dispelling  him.  I  asked  her  what 
the  baby  liked,  and  she  said  "  to  step."  The  prairie 
before  the  door  was  gay  with  flowers  of  hay,  and 
I  led  her  in.  She  argued  with  the  birds,  she  leaned 
on  clover  walls  and  they  fell,  and  dropped  her. 
With  jargon  sweeter  than  a  bell,  she  grappled  butter 
cups,  and  they  sank  together,  the  buttercups  the 
heaviest.  What  sweetest  use  of  days  !  'T  was  noting 
some  such  scene  made  Vaughan  humbly  say,  — 

"  My  days  that  are  at  best  but  dim  and  hoary." 
I  think  it  was  Vaughan.  .  .  . 

And  these  few  fragmentary  memorials  — 
closing,  like  every  human  biography,  with 
funerals,  yet  with  such  as  were  to  Emily 
Dickinson  only  the  stately  introduction  to  a 


EMILY  DICKINSON  283 

higher  life  —  may  well  end  with  her  descrip 
tion  of  the  death  of  the  very  summer  she  so 
loved. 

"  As  imperceptibly  as  grief 
The  summer  lapsed  away, 
Too  imperceptible  at  last 
To  feel  like  perfidy. 

"  A  quietness  distilled, 
As  twilight  long  begun, 
Or  Nature  spending  with  herself 
Sequestered  afternoon. 

"  The  dusk  drew  earlier  in, 
The  morning  foreign  shone, 
A  courteous  yet  harrowing  grace 
As  guest  that  would  be  gone. 

"  And  thus  without  a  wing 
Or  service  of  a  keel 
Our  summer  made  her  light  escape 
Into  the  Beautiful." 


XX 

JULIA  WARD  HOWE 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

MANY  years  of  what  may  be  called  intimacy 
with  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe  do  not  impair  one's 
power  of  painting  her  as  she  is,  and  this  for  two 
reasons  :  first,  because  she  does  not  care  to  be 
portrayed  in  any  other  way ;  and  secondly, 
because  her  freshness  of  temperament  is  so  inex 
haustible  as  to  fix  one's  attention  always  on 
what  she  said  or  did  not  merely  yesterday,  but 
this  morning.  After  knowing  her  more  than 
forty  years,  and  having  been  fellow  member 
or  officer  in  half-a-dozen  clubs  with  her,  first 
and  last,  during  that  time,  I  now  see  in  her,  not 
merely  the  woman  of  to-day,  but  the  woman 
who  went  through  the  education  of  wifehood 
and  motherhood,  of  reformer  and  agitator,  and 
in  all  these  was  educated  by  the  experience  of 
life. 

She  lived  to  refute  much  early  criticism  or 
hasty  judgment,  and  this  partly  from  inward 
growth,  partly  because  the  society  in  which  she 
moved  was  growing  for  itself  and  understood 
her  better.  The  wife  of  a  reformer  is  apt  to 
be  tested  by  the  obstacles  her  husband  en 
counters  ;  if  she  is  sympathetic,  she  shares  his 


288  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

difficulties,  and  if  not,  is  perhaps  criticised  by 
the  very  same  people  for  not  sharing  his  zeal. 
Mrs.  Howe,  moreover,  came  to  Boston  at  a  time 
when  all  New  Yorkers  were  there  regarded  with 
a  slight  distrust ;  she  bore  and  reared  five  chil 
dren,  and  doubtless,  like  all  good  mothers,  had 
methods  of  her  own  ;  she  went  into  company, 
and  was  criticised  by  cliques  which  did  not 
applaud.  Whatever  she  did,  she  might  be  in 
many  eyes  the  object  of  prejudice.  Beyond  all, 
there  was,  I  suspect,  a  slight  uncertainty  in 
her  own  mind  that  was  reflected  in  her  early 
poems. 

From  the  moment  when  she  came  forward  in 
the  Woman  Suffrage  Movement,  however,  there 
was  a  visible  change ;  it  gave  a  new  brightness 
to  her  face,  a  new  cordiality  in  her  manner, 
made  her  calmer,  firmer;  she  found  herself 
among  new  friends  and  could  disregard  old 
critics.  Nothing  can  be  more  frank  and  char 
acteristic  than  her  own  narrative  of  her  first 
almost  accidental  participation  in  a  woman's 
suffrage  meeting.  She  had  strayed  into  the 
hall,  still  not  half  convinced,  and  was  rather  re 
luctantly  persuaded  to  take  a  seat  on  the  plat 
form,  although  some  of  her  best  friends  were 
there, —  Garrison,  Phillips,  and  James  Freeman 
Clarke,  her  pastor.  But  there  was  also  Lucy 
Stone,  who  had  long  been  the  object  of  imagi- 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  289 

nary  disapproval ;  and  yet  Mrs.  Howe,  like  every 
one  else  who  heard  Lucy  Stone's  sweet  voice 
for  the  first  time,  was  charmed  and  half  won  by 
it.  I  remember  the  same  experience  at  a  New 
York  meeting  in  the  case  of  Helen  Hunt,  who 
went  to  such  a  meeting  on  purpose  to  write  a 
satirical  letter  about  it  for  the  New  York  "  Trib 
une,"  but  said  to  me,  as  we  came  out  together, 
"  Do  you  suppose  I  could  ever  write  a  word 
against  anything  which  that  woman  wishes  to 
have  done  ? "  Such  was  the  influence  of  that 
first  meeting  on  Mrs.  Howe.  "  When  they  re 
quested  me  to  speak,"  shesays,  "I  could  only  say, 
I  am  with  you.  I  have  been  with  them  ever  since, 
and  have  never  seen  any  reason  to  go  back  from 
the  pledge  then  given."  She  adds  that  she  had 
everything  to  learn  with  respect  to  public  speak 
ing,  the  rules  of  debate,  and  the  management 
of  her  voice,  she  having  hitherto  spoken  in 
parlors  only.  In  the  same  way  she  was  grad 
ually  led  into  the  wider  sphere  of  women's  con 
gresses,  and  at  last  into  the  presidency  of  the 
woman's  department  at  the  great  World's  Fair 
at  New  Orleans,  in  the  winter  of  1883-84,  at 
which  she  presided  with  great  ability,  organiz 
ing  a  series  of  short  talks  on  the  exhibits,  to  be 
given  by  experts.  While  in  charge  of  this,  she 
held  a  special  meeting  in  the  colored  people's 
department,  where  the  "  Battle  Hymn  "  was 


290  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

sung,  and  she  spoke  to  them  of  Garrison,  Sum- 
ner,  and  Dr.  Howe.  Her  daughter's  collection 
of  books  written  by  women  was  presented  to 
the  Ladies'  Art  Association  of  New  Orleans, 
and  her  whole  enterprise  was  a  singular  triumph. 
In  dealing  with  public  enterprises  in  all  parts 
of  the  country  she  soon  made  herself  welcome 
everywhere.  And  yet  this  was  the  very  woman 
who  had  written  in  the  "  Salutatory  "  of  her  first 
volume  of  poems  :  — 

"  I  was  born  'neath  a  clouded  star, 
More  in  shadow  than  light  have  grown; 

Loving  souls  are  not  like  trees 
That  strongest  and  stateliest  shoot  alone." 

The  truth  is,  that  the  life  of  a  reformer  al 
ways  affords  some  training;  either  giving  it 
self-control  or  marring  it  altogether,  —  more 
frequently  the  former ;  it  was  at  any  rate  emi 
nently  so  with  her.  It  could  be  truly  said,  in 
her  case,  that  to  have  taken  up  reform  was  a 
liberal  education. 

Added  to  this  was  the  fact  that  as  her  chil 
dren  grew,  they  rilled  and  educated  the  domes 
tic  side  of  her  life.  One  of  her  most  attractive 
poems  is  that  in  which  she  describes  herself  as 
going  out  for  exercise  on  a  rainy  day  and  walk 
ing  round  her  house,  looking  up  each  time  at 
the  window  where  her  children  were  watching 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  291 

with  merry  eagerness  for  the  successive  glimpses 
of  her.  This  is  the  poem  I  mean  :  — 

THE   HEART'S   ASTRONOMY 

This  evening,  as  the  twilight  fell, 

My  younger  children  watched  for  me  ; 

Like  cherubs  in  the  window  framed, 
I  saw  the  smiling  group  of  three. 

While  round  and  round  the  house  I  trudged, 

Intent  to  walk  a  weary  mile, 
Oft  as  I  passed  within  their  range, 

The  little  things  would  beck  and  smile. 

They  watched  me,  as  Astronomers, 
Whose  business  lies  in  heaven  afar, 

Await,  beside  the  slanting  glass, 
The  reappearance  of  a  star. 

Not  so,  not  so,  my  pretty  ones  ! 

Seek  stars  in  yonder  cloudless  sky, 
But  mark  no  steadfast  path  for  me, — 

A  comet  dire  and  strange  am  I. 

And  ye,  beloved  ones,  when  ye  know 

What  wild,  erratic  natures  are, 
Pray  that  the  laws  of  heavenly  force 

Would  hold  and  guide  the  Mother  star. 

I  remember  well   that  household  of  young 
people  in  successive  summers  at  Newport,  as 


292  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

they  grew  towards  maturity  ;  how  they  in  turn 
came  back  from  school  and  college,  each  with 
individual  tastes  and  gifts,  full  of  life,  singing, 
dancing,  reciting,  poetizing,  and  one  of  them, 
at  least,  with  a  talent  for  cookery  which  de 
lighted  all  Newport ;  then  their  wooings  and 
marriages,  always  happy ;  their  lives  always 
busy ;  their  temperaments  so  varied.  These 
are  the  influences  under  which  "wild  erratic 
natures  "  grow  calm. 

A  fine  training  it  was  also,  for  these  children 
themselves,  to  see  their  mother  one  of  the  few 
who  could  unite  all  kinds  of  friendship  in  the 
same  life.  Having  herself  the  entree  of  what 
ever  the  fashion  of  Newport  could  in  those  days 
afford ;  entertaining  brilliant  or  showy  guests 
from  New  York,  Washington,  London,  or  Paris ; 
her  doors  were  as  readily  open  at  the  same  time 
to  the  plainest  or  most  modest  reformer  — 
abolitionist,  woman  suffragist,  or  Quaker ;  and 
this  as  a  matter  of  course,  without  struggle.  I 
remember  the  indignation  over  this  of  a  young 
visitor  from  Italy,  one  of  her  own  kindred,  who 
was  in  early  girlhood  so  independently  un-Amer 
ican  that  she  came  to  this  country  only  through 
defiance.  Her  brother  had  said  to  her  after  one 
of  her  tirades,  "  Why  do  you  not  go  there  and 
see  for  yourself?"  She  responded,  "  So  I  will," 
and  sailed  the  next  week.  Once  arrived,  she 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  293 

antagonized  everything,  and  I  went  in  one  day 
and  found  her  reclining  in  a  great  armchair, 
literally  half  buried  in  some  forty  volumes  of 
Balzac  which  had  just  been  given  her  as  a  birth 
day  present.  She  was  cutting  the  leaves  of  the 
least  desirable  volume,  and  exclaimed  to  me,  "  I 
take  refuge  in  Balzac  from  the  heartlessness 
of  American  society."  Then  she  went  on  to  de 
nounce  this  society  freely,  but  always  excepted 
eagerly  her  hostess,  who  was  "  too  good  for  it" ; 
and  only  complained  of  her  that  she  had  at  that 
moment  in  the  house  two  young  girls,  daugh 
ters  of  an  eminent  reformer,  who  were  utterly 
out  of  place,  she  said,  —  knowing  neither  how  to 
behave,  how  to  dress,  nor  how  to  pronounce. 
Never  in  my  life,  I  think,  did  I  hear  a  denunci 
ation  more  honorable  to  its  object,  especially 
when  coming  from  such  a  source. 

I  never  have  encountered,  at  home  or  abroad, 
a  group  of  people  so  cultivated  and  agreeable 
as  existed  for  a  few  years  in  Newport  in  the 
summers.  There  were  present,  as  intellectual 
and  social  forces,  not  merely  the  Howes,  but 
such  families  as  the  Bancrofts,  the  Warings, 
the  Partons,  the  Potters,  the  Woolseys,  the 
Hunts,  the  Rogerses,  the  Hartes,  the  Hollands, 
the  Goodwins,  Kate  Field,  and  others  besides, 
who  were  readily  brought  together  for  any 
intellectual  enjoyment.  No  one  was  the  recog- 


294  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

nized  leader,  though  Mrs.  Howe  came  nearest  to 
it ;  but  they  met  as  cheery  companions,  nearly 
all  of  whom  'have  passed  away.  One  also  saw 
at  their  houses  some  agreeable  companions 
and  foreign  notabilities,  as  when  Mr.  Bancroft 
entertained  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Brazil, 
passing  under  an  assumed  name,  but  still  at 
tended  by  a  veteran  maid,  who  took  occasion 
to  remind  everybody  that  her  Majesty  was  a 
Bourbon,  with  no  amusing  result  except  that 
one  good  lady  and  experienced  traveler  bent 
one  knee  for  an  instant  in  her  salutation.  The 
nearest  contact  of  this  circle  with  the  unequiv 
ocally  fashionable  world  was  perhaps  when  Mrs. 
William  B.  Astor,  the  mother  of  the  present 
representative  of  that  name  in  England,  and 
herself  a  lover  of  all  things  intellectual,  came 
among  us. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  all  this  circle  that  the 
"Town  and  Country  Club"  was  formed,  of 
which  Mrs.  Howe  was  president  and  I  had  the 
humbler  functions  of  vice-president,  and  it  was 
under  its  auspices  that  the  festival  indicated  in 
the  following  programme  took  place,  at  the  al 
ways  attractive  seaside  house  of  the  late  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  John  W.  Bigelow,  of  New  York.  The 
plan  was  modeled  after  the  Harvard  Commence 
ment  exercises,  and  its  Latin  programme,  pre 
pared  by  Professor  Lane,  then  one  of  the  high- 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  295 

est  classical  authorities  in  New  England,  gave 
a  list  of  speakers  and  subjects,  the  latter  almost 
all  drawn  from  Mrs.  Howe's  ready  wit. 

Q-B-F-F-F-Q-S 

Feminae  Inlustrissimae 
Praestantissimae  •  Doctissimae  •  Peritissimae 

Omnium  •  Scientarvum  •  Doctrici 
Omnium  •  Bonarum  •  Artium  •  Magistrae 

Dominae 

IULIA  •  WARD  •  HOWE 
Praesidi  •  Magnificentissimae 

Viro  •  Honoratissimo 

Duci  •  Fortissimo 

In  •  Litteris  •  Humanioribus  •  Optime  •  Versato 
Domi  •  Militiaeque  •  Gloriam  •  Insignem  •  Nacto 

Domino 

Thomae  •  Wentworth  •  Higginsoni 
Propraesidi  •  Vigilanti 

Necnon  •  Omnibus  •  Sodalibus 

Societatis  •  Urbanoruralis 
Feminis  •  et  •  Viris  •  Ornatissimis 

Aliisque  •  Omnibus  •  Ubicumque  •  Terrarum 
Quibus  •  Hae  •  Litterae  •  Pervenerint 
Salutem  •  In  •  Domino  •  Sempiternam 

Quoniam  •  Feminis  •  Praenobilissimis 

Dominae  •  Annae  •  Bigelow 

Dominae  •  Mariae  •  Annae  •  Mott 

dementia  •  Doctrina  •  Humanitate  •  Semper  •  Insignibus 

Societatem  •  Urbanoruralem 
Ad  •  Sollemnia  •  Festive  •  Concelebranda 


296  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

Invitare  •  Singular!  •  Benignitate  •  Placuit 

Ergo 
Per  •  Has  •  Litteras  •  Omnibus  •  Notum  •  Sit  •  Quod 

Comitia  •  Sollemnia 
In  •  Aedibus  •  Bigelovensibus 

Novi  Portus 

Ante  •  Diem  •  VI I II  Kalendas  •  Septembras 
Anno  •  Salutis  •  CID  •  ID  •  CCC  •  L  XXXI 

Hora  Quinta  Postmeridiana 
Qua  •  par  •  est  •  dignitate  •  habebuntur 

Oratores  hoc  ordine  dicturi  sunt,  firaeter  eos  qui 
ualetudine  uel  alia  causa  impediti  excusantur. 

I.  Disquisitio   Latina.   "  De  Germanorum  lingua  et 
litteris."  Carolus  Timotheus  Brooks. 

II.  Disquisitio    Theologica.   "How   to   sacrifice   an 
Irish  Bull  to  a  Greek  Goddess."  Thomas  Wentworth 
Higginson. 

III.  Dissertatio  Rustica.   "Social   Small   Potatoes; 
and  how  to  enlarge  their  eyes."  Georgius   Edvardus 
Waring. 

IV.  Thesis  Rhinosophica.   "  Our  Noses,  and  What 
to  do  with  them."  Francisca  Filix  Parton,  lacobi  Uxor. 

V.  Disquisitio  Linguistica.   "  Hebrew  Roots,  with  a 
plan  of  a  new  Grubbarium."  Guilielmus  Watson  Good 
win. 

VI.  Poema.  "  The  Pacific  Woman."  Franciscus  Bret 
Harte. 

VII.  Oratio  Historica.  "The  Ideal  New  York  Alder 
man."  lacobus  Parton. 

Exercitationibus  litterariis  ad  finem  perductis,  gradus 
honorarii  Praesidis  auspiciis  augustissimis  rite  confer- 
entur. 

Mercurii  Typis 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  297 

I  remember  how  I  myself  distrusted  this 
particular  project,  which  was  wholly  hers. 
When  she  began  to  plan  out  the  " parts"  in  ad 
vance,  —  the  Rev.  Mr.  Brooks,  the  foremost  of 
German  translators,  with  his  Teutonic  themes ; 
the  agricultural  Waring  with  his  potatoes  ;  Harte 
on  Pacific  women;  Parton  with  his  New  York 
aldermen,  and  I  myself  with  two  recent  papers 
mingled  in  one, —  I  ventured  to  remonstrate. 
"  They  will  not  write  these  Commencement 
orations,"  I  said.  "Then  I  will  write  them," 
responded  Mrs.  Howe,  firmly.  "They  will  not 
deliver  them,"  I  said.  "  Then  I  will  deliver 
them,"  she  replied ;  and  so,  in  some  cases,  she 
practically  did.  She  and  I  presided,  dividing 
between  us  the  two  parts  of  Professor  Goodwin's 
Oxford  gown  for  our  official  adornment,  to  en 
force  the  dignity  of  the  occasion,  and  the  Sod- 
etas  Urbanoruralis,  or  Town  and  Country  Club, 
proved  equal  to  the  occasion.  An  essay  on 
"rhinosophy"  was  given  by  "Fanny  Fern" 
(Mrs.  Parton),  which  was  illustrated  on  the 
blackboard  by  this  equation,  written  slowly  by 
Mrs.  Howe  and  read  impressively:  — 

"Nose  +  nose  +  nose  =  proboscis 
Nose  —  nose  —  nose  =  snub." 

She  also  sang  a  song  occasionally,  and  once 
called  up  a  class  for  recitations  from  Mother 


298  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

Goose  in  six  different  languages ;  Professor 
Goodwin  beginning  with  a  Greek  version  of 
"The  Man  in  the  Moon,"  and  another  Harvard 
man  (now  Dr.  Gorham  Bacon)  following  up 
with 

"Heu!  iter  didilum 

Felis  cum  fidulum 
Vacca  transiluit  lunam. 
Caniculus  ridet 
Quum  talem  videt 
Et  dish  ambulavit  cum  spoonam." 

The  question  being  asked  by  Mrs.  Howe 
whether  this  last  line  was  in  strict  accordance 
with  grammar,  the  scholar  gave  the  following 
rule :  "  The  conditions  of  grammar  should 
always  give  way  to  exigencies  of  rhyme."  In 
conclusion,  two  young  girls,  Annie  Bigelow 
and  Mariana  Mott,  were  called  forward  to  re 
ceive  graduate  degrees  for  law  and  medicine ; 
the  former's  announcement  coming  in  this 
simple  form  :  "Annie  Bigelow,  my  little  lamb, 
I  welcome  you  to  a  long  career  at  the  ba-a." 

That  time  is  long  past,  but  "The  Hurdy- 
Gurdy,"  or  any  one  of  the  later  children's  books 
by  Mrs.  Howe's  daughter,  Mrs.  Laura  Richards, 
will  give  a  glimpse  at  the  endless  treasury  of 
daring  fun  which  the  second  generation  of  that 
family  inherited  from  their  mother  in  her 
prime ;  which  last  gift,  indeed,  has  lasted  pretty 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  299 

well  to  the  present  day.  It  was,  we  must  re 
member,  never  absolutely  out  of  taste;  but  it 
must  be  owned  that  she  would  fearlessly  ven 
ture  on  half-a-dozen  poor  jokes  for  one  good 
one.  Such  a  risk  she  feared  not  to  take  at 
any  moment,  beyond  any  woman  I  ever  knew. 
Nature  gave  her  a  perpetual  youth,  and  what 
is  youth  if  it  be  not  fearless  ? 

In  her  earlier  Newport  period  she  was  always 
kind  and  hospitable,  sometimes  dreamy  and 
forgetful,  not  always  tactful.  Bright  things 
always  came  readily  to  her  lips,  and  a  second 
thought  sometimes  came  too  late  to  withhold 
a  bit  of  sting.  When  she  said  to  an  artist  who 
had  at  one  time  painted  numerous  portraits  of 

one  large  and  well-known  family,  "Mr.  , 

given  age  and  sex,  could  you  create  a  Cabot  ?"  it 
gave  no  cause  for  just  complaint,  because  the 
family  likeness  was  so  pervasive  that  he  would 
have  grossly  departed  from  nature  had  he  left  it 
out.  But  I  speak  rather  of  the  perils  of  human 
intercourse,  especially  from  a  keen  and  ready 
hostess,  where  there  is  not  time  to  see  clearly 
how  one's  hearers  may  take  a  phrase.  Thus 
when,  in  the  deep  valley  of  what  was  then  her 
country  seat,  she  was  guiding  her  guests  down, 
one  by  one,  she  suddenly  stopped  beside  a  rock 
or  fountain  and  exclaimed,  —  for  she  never  pre 
meditated  things,  —  "  Now,  let  each  of  us  tell 


300  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

a  short  story  while  we  rest  ourselves  here ! " 
The  next  to  arrive  was  a  German  baron  well 
known  in  Newport  and  Cambridge, — a  great 
authority  in  entomology,  who  always  lamented 
that  he  had  wasted  his  life  by  undertaking  so 
large  a  theme  as  the  diptera  or  two-winged  in 
sects,  whereas  the  study  of  any  one  family  of 
these,  as  the  flies  or  mosquitoes,  gave  enough 
occupation  for  a  man's  whole  existence, —  and 
he,  prompt  to  obedience,  told  a  lively  little 
German  anecdote.  "Capital,  capital!"  said  our 
hostess,  clapping  her  hands  merrily  and  looking 
at  two  ladies  just  descended  on  the  scene.  "Tell 
it  again,  Baron,  for  these  ladies  ;  tell  it  in  Eng 
lish."  It  was  accordingly  done,  but  I  judged 
from  the  ladies'  faces  that  they  would  have 
much  preferred  to  hear  it  in  German,  as  others 
had  done,  even  if  they  missed  nine  tenths 
of  the  words.  Very  likely  the  speaker  herself 
may  have  seen  her  error  at  the  next  moment, 
but  in  a  busy  life  one  must  run  many  risks. 
I  doubt  not  she  sometimes  lost  favor  with  a 
strange  guest,  in  those  days,  by  the  very  quick 
ness  which  gave  her  no  time  for  second  thought. 
Yet,  after  all,  of  what  quickness  of  wit  may 
not  this  be  said  ?  Time,  practice,  the  habit  of 
speaking  in  public  meetings  or  presiding  over 
them,  these  helped  to  array  all  her  quick-witted- 
ness  on  the  side  of  tact  and  courtesy. 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  301 

Mrs.  Howe  was  one  of  the  earliest  contribu 
tors  to  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly."  Her  poem 
"  Hamlet  at  the  Boston  "  appeared  in  the  second 
year  of  the  magazine,  in  February,  1859,  and 
her  "Trip  to  Cuba"  appeared  in  six  successive 
numbers  in  that  and  the  following  volume.  Her 
poem  "The  Last  Bird"  also  appeared  in  one 
of  these  volumes,  after  which  there  was  an  in 
terval  of  two  and  a  half  years  during  which  her 
contributions  were  suspended.  Several  more 
of  her  poems  came  out  in  volume  viii  (1861), 
and  the  "Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic"  in 
the  number  for  February,  1862  (ix,  145).  During 
the  next  two  years  there  appeared  six  numbers 
of  a  striking  series  called  "  Lyrics  of  the  Street." 
Most  of  these  poems,  with  others,  were  in 
cluded  in  a  volume  called  "Later  Lyrics" 
(1865).  She  had  previously,  however,  in  1853, 
published  her  first  volume  of  poems,  entitled 
"Passion  Flowers";  and  these  volumes  were  at 
a  later  period  condensed  into  one  by  her  daugh 
ters,  with  some  omissions,  —  not  always  quite 
felicitous,  as  I  think, — this  definitive  volume 
bearing  the  name  "From  Sunset  Ridge"  (1898). 

Mrs.  Howe,  like  her  friend  Dr.  Holmes,  has 
perhaps  had  the  disappointing  experience  of 
concentrating  her  sure  prospects  of  fame  on  a 
single  poem.  What  the  "  Chambered  Nautilus  " 
represents  in  his  published  volumes,  the  "  Bat- 


302  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

tie  Hymn  of  the  Republic  "  represents  for  her. 
In  each  case  the  poet  was  happy  enough  to 
secure,  through  influences  impenetrable,  one 
golden  moment.  Even  this  poem,  in  Mrs. 
Howe's  case,  was  not  (although  many  suppose 
otherwise)  a  song  sung  by  all  the  soldiers.  The 
resounding  lyric  of  "  John  Brown's  Body " 
reached  them  much  more  readily,  but  the  "  Bat 
tle  Hymn  "  will  doubtless  survive  all  the  rest 
of  the  rather  disappointing  metrical  products 
of  the  war.  For  the  rest  of  her  poems,  they  are 
rarely  quite  enough  concentrated  ;  they  reach 
our  ears  attractively,  but  not  with  positive  mas 
tery.  Of  the  war  songs,  the  one  entitled  "  Our 
Orders  "  was  perhaps  the  finest,  —  that  which 
begins,  — 

"Weave  no  more  silks,  ye  Lyons  looms, 

To  deck  our  girls  for  gay  delights  ! 
The  crimson  flower  of  battle  blooms, 
And  solemn  marches  fill  the  night." 

"Hamlet  at  the  Boston  "  is  a  strong  and  noble 
poem,  as  is  "The  Last  Bird,"  which  has  a  fla 
vor  of  Bryant  about  it.  "  Eros  has  Warning"  and 
"  Eros  Departs "  are  two  of  the  profoundest ; 
and  so  is  the  following,  which  I  have  always 
thought  her  most  original  and  powerful  poem 
after  the  "  Battle  Hymn,"  in  so  far  that  I  ven 
tured  to  supply  a  feebler  supplement  to  it  on  a 
late  birthday. 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  303 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  in  the  game  of 
"  Rouge  et  Noir  "  the  announcement  by  the 
dealer,  "  Rouge  gagne,"  implies  that  the  red 
wins,  while  the  phrase  "Donner  de  la  couleur" 
means  simply  to  follow  suit  and  accept  what 
comes. 

ROUGE   GAGNE 

The  wheel  is  turned,  the  cards  are  laid ; 
The  circle  's  drawn,  the  bets  are  paid : 
I  stake  my  gold  upon  the  red. 

The  rubies  of  the  bosom  mine, 
The  river  of  life,  so  swift  divine, 
.    In  red  all  radiantly  shine. 

Upon  the  cards,  like  gouts  of  blood, 
Lie  dinted  hearts,  and  diamonds  good, 
The  red  for  faith  and  hardihood. 

In  red  the  sacred  blushes  start 
On  errand  from  a  virgin  heart, 
To  win  its  glorious  counterpart. 

The  rose  that  makes  the  summer  fair, 
The  velvet  robe  that  sovereigns  wear 
The  red  revealment  could  not  spare. 

And  men  who  conquer  deadly  odds 
By  fields  of  ice  and  raging  floods, 
Take  the  red  passion  from  the  gods. 


304  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

Now  Love  is  red,  and  Wisdom  pale, 
But  human  hearts  are  faint  and  frail 
Till  Love  meets  Love,  and  bids  it  hail. 

I  see  the  chasm,  yawning  dread ; 
I  see  the  flaming  arch  o'erhead  : 
I  stake  my  life  upon  the  red. 

This  was  my  daring  supplement,  which  ap 
peared  in  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  (Contribu 
tors'  Club)  for  October,  1906. 

LA   COULEUR 

"  I  stake  my  life  upon  the  red  !  " 
With  hair  still  golden  on  her  head, 
Dame  Julia  of  the  Valley  said.  * 

But  Time  for  her  has  plans  not  told, 
And  while  her  patient  years  unfold 
They  yield  the  white  and  not  the  gold. 

Where  Alpine  summits  loftiest  lie, 
The  brown,  the  green,  the  red  pass  by, 
And  whitest  top  is  next  the  sky. 

And  now  with  meeker  garb  bedight, 
Dame  Julia  sings  in  loftier  light, 
"  I  stake  my  life  upon  the  white  !  " 

Turning  to  Mrs.  Howe's  prose  works,  one 
finds  something  of  the  same  obstruction,  here 
and  there,  from  excess  of  material.  Her  auto 
biography,  entitled  "Reminiscences,"  might 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  305 

easily,  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  M.  D.  Conway,  for  in 
stance,  have  been  spread  out  into  three  or  four 
interesting  octavos ;  but  in  her  more  hurried 
grasp  it  is  squeezed  into  one  volume,  where 
groups  of  delightful  interviews  with  heroes 
at  home  and  abroad  are  crowded  into  some 
single  sentence.  Her  lectures  are  better  ar 
ranged  and  less  tantalizing,  and  it  would  be 
hard  to  find  a  book  in  American  literature 
better  worth  reprinting  and  distributing  than 
the  little  volume  containing  her  two  addresses 
on  "  Modern  Society."  In  wit,  in  wisdom,  in 
anecdote,  I  know  few  books  so  racy.  Next  to 
it  is  the  lecture  "  Is  Polite  Society  Polite  ?  "  so 
keen  and  pungent  that  it  is  said  a  young  man 
was  once  heard  inquiring  for  Mrs.  Howe  after 
hearing  it,  in  a  country  town,  and  when  asked 
why  he  wished  to  see  her,  replied,  "Well,  I 
did  put  my  brother  in  the  poorhouse,  and  now 
that  I  have  heard  Mrs.  Howe,  I  suppose  that  I 
must  take  him  out."  In  the  large  collection 
of  essays  comprised  in  the  same  volume  with 
this,  there  are  papers  on  Paris  and  on  Greece 
which  are  full  of  the  finest  flavor  of  anecdote, 
sympathy,  and  memory,  while  here  and  there 
in  all  her  books  one  meets  with  glimpses  of 
Italy  which  remind  one  of  that  scene  on  the 
celebration  of  the  birthday  of  Columbus,  when 
she  sat  upon  the  platform  of  Faneuil  Hall,  the 


306  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

only  woman,  and  gave  forth  sympathetic  talk 
in  her  gracious  way  to  the  loving  Italian  audi 
ence,  which  gladly  listened  to  their  own  sweet 
tongue  from  her.  Then,  as  always,  she  could 
trust  herself  freely  in  speech,  for  she  never  spoke 
without  fresh  adaptation  to  the  occasion,  and 
her  fortunate  memory  for  words  and  names  is 
unimpaired  at  ninety. 

Since  I  am  here  engaged  upon  a  mere  sketch 
of  Mrs.  Howe,  not  a  formal  memoir,  I  have  felt 
free  to  postpone  until  this  time  the  details  of 
her  birth  and  parentage.  She  was  the  daughter 
of  Samuel  and  Julia  Rush  (Cutler)  Ward,  and 
was  born  at  the  house  of  her  parents  in  the 
Bowling  Green,  New  York  city,  on  May  27, 
1819.  She  was  married  on  April  14,  1843,  at 
nearly  twenty-four  years  of  age,  to  Dr.  Sam 
uel  Gridley  Howe,  whom  she  had  met  on  vis 
its  to  Boston.  They  soon  went  to  Europe, — 
the  first  of  many  similar  voyages,  —  where  her 
eldest  daughter,  Julia  Romana,  was  born  dur 
ing  the  next  spring.  This  daughter  was  the 
author  of  a  volume  of  poems  entitled  "  Stray 
Clouds,"  and  of  a  description  of  the  Summer 
School  of  Philosophy  at  Concord  entitled  "  Phi- 
losophiae  Quaestor,"  and  was  the  founder  of  a 
metaphysical  club  of  which  she  was  presi 
dent.  She  became  the  wife  of  the  late  Michael 
Anagnos,  of  Greek  origin,  her  father's  successor 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  307 

in  charge  of  the  Institution  for  the  Blind,  and 
the  news  of  her  early  death  was  received  with 
general  sorrow.  Mrs.  Howe's  second  daughter 
was  named  Florence  Marion,  became  in  1871 
the  wife  of  David  Prescott  Hall,  of  the  New 
York  Bar,  and  was  author  of  "Social  Cus 
toms"  and  "The  Correct  Thing,"  being  also 
a  frequent  speaker  before  the  women's  clubs. 
Mrs.  Howe's  third  daughter,  Mrs.  Laura  E. 
Richards,  was  married  in  the  same  year  to 
Henry  Richards,  of  Gardiner,  Maine,  a  town 
named  for  the  family  of  Mr.  Richards's  mother, 
who  established  there  a  once  famous  school, 
the  Gardiner  Lyceum.  The  younger  Mrs.  Rich 
ards  is  author  of  "Captain  January"  and  other 
stories  of  very  wide  circulation,  written  pri 
marily  for  her  own  children,  and  culminating  in 
a  set  of  nonsense  books  of  irresistible  humor 
illustrated  by  herself.  Mrs.  Howe's  youngest 
daughter,  Maud,  distinguished  for  her  beauty 
and  social  attractiveness,  is  the  wife  of  Mr. 
John  Elliott,  an  English  artist,  and  has  lived 
much  in  Italy,  where  she  has  written  various 
books  of  art  and  literature,  of  which  "Ata- 
lanta  in  the  South"  was  the  first  and  "Roma 
Beata"  one  of  the  last.  Mrs.'  Howe's  only 
son,  Henry  Marion,  graduated  at  Harvard  Uni 
versity  in  1869  and  from  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology  in  1871,  is  a  mining 


308  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

engineer  and  expert,  and  is  a  professor  in  the 
School  of  Mines  at  Columbia  University.  His 
book  on  "The  Metallurgy  of  Steel"  has  won 
for  him  a  high  reputation.  It  will  thus  be  seen 
that  Mrs.  Howe  has  had  the  rare  and  perhaps 
unequaled  experience  of  being  not  merely  her 
self  an  author,  but  the  mother  of  five  children, 
all  authors.  She  has  many  grandchildren,  and 
even  a  great-grandchild,  whose  future  career 
can  hardly  be  surmised. 

There  was  held,  in  honor  of  Mrs.  Howe's 
eighty-sixth  birthday  (May  27,  1905),  a  meeting 
of  the  Boston  Authors'  Club,  including  a  little 
festival  whose  plan  was  taken  from  the  annual 
Welsh  festival  of  the  Eistedfodd,  at  which  every 
bard  of  that  nation  brought  four  lines  of  verse 
— a  sort  of  four-leaved  clover — to  his  chief. 
This  being  tried  at  short  notice  for  Mrs.  Howe, 
there  came  in  some  sixty  poems,  of  which  I 
select  a  few,  almost  at  random,  to  make  up  the 
outcome  of  the  festival,  which  last  did  not 
perhaps  suffer  from  the  extreme  shortness  of 
the  notice:  — 

BIRTHDAY   GREETINGS,   LIMITED 

Why  limit  to  one  little  four-line  verse 

Each  birthday  wish,  for  her  we  meet  to  honor  ? 

Else  it  might  take  till  mornrise  to  rehearse 
All  the  glad  homage  we  would  lavish  on  her ! 
JOHN  TOWNSEND  TROWBRIDGE. 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  309 

THE   "NONNA"   OF   MAGNA   ITALIA 

Within  the  glow  shed  by  her  heart  of  gold, 

Warm  Southern  sunshine  cheers  our  Northern 
skies, 

And  pilgrim  wanderers,  homesick  and  a-cold, 
Find  their  loved  Italy  in  her  welcoming  eyes. 

VlDA    D.    SCUDDER. 

FIVE   O'CLOCK  WITH   THE   IMMORTALS 

The  Sisters  Three  who  spin  our  fate 
Greet  Julia  Ward,  who  comes  quite  late ; 
How  Greek  wit  flies !  They  scream  with  glee, 
Drop  thread  and  shears,  and  make  the  tea. 

E.  H.  CLEMENT. 

Hope  now  abiding,  faith  long  ago, 

Never  a  shadow  between. 
White  of  the  lilacs  and  white  of  the  snow, 

Seventy  and  sixteen. 

MARY  GRAY  MORRISON. 

In  English,  French,  Italian,  German,  Greek, 

Our  many-gifted  President  can  speak. 

Wit,  Wisdom,  world-wide  Knowledge   grace   her 

tongue 
And  she  is  only  Eighty-six  years  young ! 

NATHAN  HASKELL  DOLE. 

How  to  be  gracious  ?  How  to  be  true  ? 
Poet,  and  Seer,  and  Woman  too  ? 
To  crown  with  Spring  the  Winter's  brow  ? 
Here  is  the  answer :  this  is  Howe. 

MARY  ELIZABETH  BLAKE. 


3io  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

If  man  could  change  the  universe 
By  force  of  epigrams  in  verse, 
He  'd  smash  some  idols,  I  allow, 
But  who  would  alter  Mrs.  Howe  ? 

ROBERT  GRANT. 

Lady  who  lovest  and  who  livest  Peace, 

And  yet  didst  write  Earth's  noblest  battle  song 

At  Freedom's  bidding,  —  may  thy  fame  increase 

Till  dawns  the  warless  age  for  which  we  long ! 

FREDERIC  LAWRENCE  KNOWLES. 

Dot  oldt  Fader  Time  must  be  cutting  some  dricks, 
Vhen  he  calls  our   goot  Bresident's  age   eighty- 
six. 

An  octogeranium  !  Who  would  suppose  ? 
My  dear  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,der  time  goes! 
YAWCOB  STRAUSS  (CHARLES  FOLLEN  ADAMS). 

You,  who  are  of  the  spring, 
To  whom  Youth's  joys  must  cling, 
May  all  that  Love  can  give 
Beguile  you  long  to  live  — 

Our  Queen  of  Hearts. 

LOUISE  CHANDLER  MOULTON. 

H  ere,  on  this  joyous  day  of  days, 
O   deign  to  list  my  skill-less  praise. 
W  hate'er  be  said  with  tongue  or  pen 
E    xtolling  thee,  I  cry  "  Amen." 

BEULAH  MARIE  Dix. 


JULIA  WARD  HOWE  311 

Mrs.  Howe  was  not  apprised  of  the  project 
in  advance,  and  certainly  had  not  seen  the 
verses;  but  was,  at  any  rate,  ready  as  usual, 
and  this  sketch  may  well  close  with  her  cheery 
answer :  — 

MRS.   HOWE'S    REPLY 

Why,  bless  you,  I  ain't  nothing,  nor  nobody,  nor 
much, 

If  you  look  in  your  Directory  you  '11  find  a  thou 
sand  such. 

I  walk  upon  the  level  ground,  I  breathe  upon  the 
air, 

I  study  at  a  table  and  reflect  upon  a  chair. 

I   know  a  casual   mixture  of   the   Latin  and  the 

Greek, 
I  know  the  Frenchman's  parkz-vous,  and  how  the 

Germans  speak ; 
Well  can  I  add,  and  well  subtract,  and  say  twice 

two  is  four, 
But  of  those  direful  sums  and  proofs  remember 

nothing  more. 

I  wrote  a  poetry  book  one  time,  and  then  I  wrote 

a  play, 
And  a  friend  who  went  to  see  it  said  she  fainted 

right  away. 

Then  I  got  up  high  to  speculate  upon  the  Universe, 
And  folks  who   heard    me   found   themselves  no 

better  and  no  worse. 


312  JULIA  WARD  HOWE 

Yes,  I  ve  had  a  lot  of  birthdays  and  I  'm  growing 

very  old, 
That 's  why  they  make  so  much  of  me,  if  once  the 

truth  were  told. 
And  I  love  the  shade  in  summer,  and  in  winter 

love  the  sun, 
And  I  'm  just  learning  how  to  live,  my  wisdom  's 

just  begun. 

Don't  trouble  more  to  celebrate  this  natal  day  of 

mine, 
But  keep  the  grasp  of  fellowship  which  warms  us 

more  than  wine. 
Let  us  thank  the  lavish  hand  that  gives  world 

beauty  to  our  eyes, 
And  bless  the  days  that  saw  us  young,  and  years 

that  make  us  wise. 


XXI 
WILLIAM  JAMES   ROLFE 


WILLIAM   JAMES    ROLFE 

THE  "man  of  one  book"  (homo  unius  libri) 
whom  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  praised  has  now 
pretty  nearly  vanished  from  the  world ;  and 
those  men  are  rare,  especially  in  our  versatile 
America,  who  have  deliberately  chosen  one  de 
partment  of  literary  work  and  pursued  it  with 
out  essential  variation  up  to  old  age.  Of  these, 
Francis  Parkman  was  the  most  conspicuous 
representative,  and  William  James  Rolfe  is  per 
haps  the  most  noticeable  successor,  —  a  man 
who,  upon  a  somewhat  lower  plane  than  Park 
man,  has  made  for  himself  a  permanent  mark 
in  a  high  region  of  editorship,  akin  to  that  of 
Furnivall  and  a  few  compeers  in  England.  A 
teacher  by  profession  all  his  life,  his  especial 
sphere  has  been  the  English  department,  a 
department  which  he  may  indeed  be  said  to 
have  created  in  our  public  schools,  and  thus 
indirectly  in  our  colleges. 

William  James  Rolfe,  son  of  John  and  Lydia 
Davis  (Moulton)  Rolfe,  was  born  on  December 
io,  1827,  in  Newburyport,  Massachusetts,  a  rural 
city  which  has  been  the  home  at  different  times 
of  a  number  of  literary  and  public  men,  and  is 


3i6  WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE 

still,  by  its  wide,  elm-shaded  chief  avenue  and 
ocean  outlook,  found  attractive  by  all  visitors. 
Rolfe's  boyhood,  however,  was  passed  mainly  in 
Lowell,  Massachusetts,  where  he  was  fitted  for 
college  in  the  high  school.  He  spent  three  years 
at  Amherst  College,  but  found  himself  unable 
to  afford  to  remain  any  longer,  and  engaged  in 
school-teaching  as  a  means  of  immediate  sup 
port.  A  bankrupt  country  academy  at  Wren- 
tham,  about  twenty-five  miles  from  Boston, 
was  offered  to  him  rent  free  if  he  would  keep 
a  school  in  it,  and,  for  want  of  anything  better, 
he  took  it.  He  had  to  teach  all  the  grammar 
and  high  school  branches,  including  the  fitting 
of  boys  for  college,  and  his  pupils  ranged  from 
ten  years  old  to  those  two  or  three  years  older 
than  himself.  He  was  the  only  teacher,  and 
heard  from  sixteen  to  twenty  classes  a  day.  Be 
sides  these,  which  included  classes  in  Latin, 
French,  Greek,  and  German,  he  had  pupils  out 
of  school  in  Spanish  and  Italian,  adding  to  all 
this  the  enterprise,  then  wholly  new,  of  sys 
tematically  teaching  English  with  the  study 
of  standard  writers.  This  was  apparently  a 
thing  never  done  before  that  time  in  the  whole 
United  States. 

So  marked  was  the  impression  made  by  his 
mode  of  teaching  that  it  led  to  his  appointment 
as  principal  of  the  pioneer  public  high  schools  at 


WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE  317 

Dorchester,  Massachusetts.  He  there  required 
work  in  English  of  all  his  pupils,  boys  and  girls 
alike,  including  those  who  had  collegiate  aims. 
At  this  time  no  English,  as  such,  was  required 
at  any  American  college,  and  it  was  only  since 
1846  that  Harvard  had  introduced  even  a  pre 
liminary  examination,  in  which  Worcester's 
"Elements  of  History  and  Elements  of  Geogra 
phy"  were  added  to  the  original  departments 
of  Latin,  Greek,  and  mathematics.  Rolfe's  boys 
enjoyed  the  studies  in  English  literature,  but 
feared  lest  they  might  fail  in  the  required  work 
in  classics  unless  they  were  excused  from  Eng 
lish.  To  relieve  their  anxiety  and  his  own,  their 
teacher  wrote  to  Professor  Felton,  afterwards 
President  of  Harvard,  telling  him  what  his  boys 
were  doing  in  English,  and  asking  permission 
to  omit  some  portion  of  his  Greek  Reader  then 
required  for  admission.  Professor  Felton  re 
plied,  in  substance,  "  Go  ahead  with  the  Eng 
lish  and  let  the  Greek  take  care  of  itself."  As 
a  result,  all  four  of  the  boys  entered  Harvard 
without  conditions,  and  it  is  worth  noticing  that 
they  all  testified  that  no  part  of  their  prepara 
tory  training  was  more  valuable  to  them  in  col 
lege  than  this  in  English.  It  is  also  noticeable 
that  the  late  Henry  A.  Clapp,  of  Boston,  long 
eminent  as  a  lecturer  on  Shakespeare,  was  one 
of  these  boys. 


318  WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE 

In  the  summer  of  1857  Mr.  Rolf e  was  invited 
to  take  charge  of  the  high  school  at  Lawrence, 
Massachusetts,  on  a  larger  scale  than  the  Dor 
chester  institution,  and  was  again  promoted  after 
four  years  to  Salem,  and  the  next  year  to  be 
principal  of  the  Cambridge  high  school,  where 
he  remained  until  1868.  Since  that  time  he  has 
continued  to  reside  in  Cambridge,  and  has 
devoted  himself  to  editorial  and  literary  work. 
His  literary  labors  from  1869  to  the  present 
day  have  been  vast  and  varied.  He  has  been  one 
of  the  editors  of  the  "Popular  Science  News" 
(formerly  the  Boston  "Journal  of  Chemistry"), 
and  for  nearly  twenty  years  has  had  charge 
of  the  department  of  Shakespeareana  in  the 
"Literary  World"  and  the  "Critic,"  to  which 
he  has  also  added  "  Poet-Lore."  He  has  written 
casual  articles  for  other  periodicals.  In  1865 
he  published  a  handbook  of  Latin  poetry  with 
J.  H.  Hanson,  A.  M.,  of  Waterville,  Maine.  In 
1867  he  followed  this  by  an  American  edition 
of  Craik's  "English  of  Shakespeare."  Between 
1 867  and  1 869,  in  connection  with  J.  A.  Gillet,  he 
brought  out  the  "Cambridge  course"  in  phys 
ics,  in  six  volumes.  In  1870  he  edited  Shake 
speare's  "Merchant  of  Venice"  with  such  suc 
cess  that  by  1883  he  had  completed  an  edition  of 
all  the  plays  in  forty  volumes.  It  has  long  been 
accepted  as  a  standard  critical  authority,  being 


WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE  319 

quoted  as  such  by  leading  English  and  German 
editors.  He  was  lately  engaged  in  a  thorough 
revision  of  this  edition,  doing  this  task  after 
he  had  reached  the  age  of  seventy-five.  He  has 
also  edited  Scott's  complete  poems,  as  well  as 
(separately)  "  The  Lady  of  the  Lake"  and  "  The 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel " ;  an  edition  de  luxe 
of  Tennyson's  works  in  twelve  volumes,  and 
another,  the  Cambridge  Edition,  in  one  volume. 
He  has  edited  volumes  of  selections  from  Mil 
ton,  Gray,  Goldsmith,  Wordsworth,  and  Brown 
ing,  with  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Sonnets  from  the 
Portuguese."  He  is  also  the  author  of  "  Shake 
speare  the  Boy,"  with  sketches  of  youthful  life 
of  that  period  ;  "  The  Satchel  Guide  to  Europe," 
published  anonymously  for  twenty-eight  years  ; 
and  a  book  on  the  "  Elementary  Study  of  Eng 
lish."  With  his  son,  John  C.  Rolfe,  Ph.  D., 
Professor  of  Latin  in  the  University  of  Penn 
sylvania,  he  has  edited  Macaulay's  "  Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome."  He  has  published  a  series  of 
elementary  English  classics  in  six  volumes.  He 
has  also  supervised  the  publication  of  the  "  New 
Century  Edition  de  luxe  "  of  Shakespeare  in 
twenty-four  volumes,  besides  writing  for  it  a 
"  Life  of  Shakespeare  "  which  fills  a  volume  of 
five  hundred  and  fifty  pages,  now  published  sep 
arately.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  no  other  Ameri 
can,  and  probably  no  Englishman,  has  rivaled 


320  WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE 

him  for  the  extent,  variety,  and  accuracy  of  his 
services  as  an  editor. 

This  work  may  be  justly  divided  into  two 
parts :  that  dealing  mainly  with  Shakespeare, 
and  that  with  single  minor  authors  whose  com 
plete  or  partial  work  he  has  reprinted.  In  Shake 
speare  he  has,  of  course,  the  highest  theme  to 
dwell  on,  but  also  that  in  which  he  has  been  pre 
ceded  by  a  vast  series  of  workmen.  In  these  his 
function  has  not  been  so  much  that  of  original 
and  individual  criticism  as  of  judiciously  com 
piling  the  work  of  predecessors,  this  last  fact 
being  especially  true  since  the  printing  of  the 
Furness  edition.  It  is  in  dealing  with  the  minor 
authors  that  he  has  been  led  to  the  discovery, 
at  first  seeming  almost  incredible,  that  the 
poems  which  most  claimed  the  attention  of  the 
world  have  for  that  very  reason  been  gradually 
most  changed  and  perverted  in  printing.  Gray's 
"  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard,"  for  instance, 
has  appeared  in  polyglot  editions ;  it  has  been 
translated  fifteen  times  into  French,  thirteen 
into  Italian,  twelve  times  into  Latin,  and  so  on 
down  through  Greek,  German,  Portuguese,  and 
Hebrew.  No  one  poem  in  the  English  language, 
even  by  Longfellow,  equals  it  in  this  respect. 
The  editions  which  appeared  in  Gray's  own 
time  were  kept  correct  through  his  own  careful 
supervision ;  and  the  changes  in  successive 


WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE  321 

editions  were  at  first  those  made  by  himself, 
usually  improvements,  as  where  he  changed 
" some  village  Cato  "  to  "some  village  Hampden," 
and  substituted  in  the  same  verse  "Milton" 
for  "Tully"  and  "  Cromwell  "  for  "  Csesar."  But 
there  are  many  errors  in  Pickering's  edition, 
and  these  have  been  followed  by  most  Ameri 
can  copies.  It  may  perhaps  be  doubted  whether 
Dr.  Rolfe  is  quite  correct  in  his  opinion  where 
he  says  in  his  preface  to  this  ode,  "No  vicis 
situdes  of  taste  or  fashion  have  affected  its 
popularity"  ;  it  is  pretty  certain  that  young 
people  do  not  know  it  by  heart  so  generally  as 
they  once  did,  and  Wordsworth  pronounced  its 
dialect  often  "unintelligible";  but  we  are  all 
under  obligation  to  Dr.  Rolfe  for  his  careful 
revision  of  this  text. 

Turning  now  to  Scott's  "Lady  of  the  Lake," 
which  would  seem  next  in  familiarity  to  Gray's 
"  Elegy,"  we  find  scores  of  corrections,  made 
in  Rolfe's,  of  errors  that  have  crept  gradually 
in  since  the  edition  of  1821.  For  instance,  in 
Canto  II,  1.  685,  every  edition  since  1821  has 
had  "  I  meant  not  all  my  heart  would  say,"  the 
correct  reading  being  "  my  heat  would  say."  In 
Canto  VI,  1.  396,  the  Scottish  "bonne"  has 
been  changed  to  "  bound"  and  eight  lines  below, 
the  old  word  " barded"  has  become  "barbed"  ; 
and  these  are  but  a  few  among  many  examples. 


322  WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE 

When  we  turn  to  Shakespeare,  we  find  less 
direct  service  of  this  kind  required  than  in  the 
minor  authors  ;  less  need  of  the  microscope.  At 
any  rate,  the  variations  have  all  been  thoroughly 
scrutinized,  and  no  flagrant  changes  have  come 
to  light  since  the  disastrous  attempt  in  that 
direction  of  Mr.  Collier  in  1852.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  come  to  a  new  class  of  variations, 
which  it  would  have  been  well  perhaps  to  have 
stated  more  clearly  in  the  volumes  where  they 
occur  ;  namely,  the  studied  omissions,  in  Rolfe's 
edition,  of  all  indecent  words  or  phrases.  There 
is  much  to  be  said  for  and  against  this  process 
of  Bowdlerizing,  as  it  was  formerly  called ;  and 
those  who  recall  the  publication  of  the  origi 
nal  Bowdler  experiment  in  this  line,  half  a  cen 
tury  ago,  and  the  seven  editions  which  it  went 
through  from  1818  to  i86i,can  rememberwith 
what  disapproval  such  expurgation  was  long  re 
garded.  Even  now  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  the 
new  edition  of  reprints  of  the  early  folio  Shake- 
speares,  edited  by  two  ladies,  Misses  Clarke  and 
Porter,  adopts  no  such  method.  Of  course  the 
objection  to  the  process  is  on  the  obvious  ground 
that  concealment  creates  curiosity,  and  the 
great  majority  of  copies  of  Shakespeare  will  be 
always  unexpurgated,  so  that  it  is  very  easy  to 
turn  to  them.  Waiving  this  point,  and  assum 
ing  the  spelling  to  be  necessarily  modernized, 


WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE  323 

it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  any  school  edition 
done  more  admirably  than  the  new  issue  of  Mr. 
Rolfe's  volumes  of  Shakespeare's  works.  The 
type  is  clear,  the  paper  good,  and  the  notes  and 
appendices  are  the  result  of  long  experience. 
When  one  turns  back,  for  instance,  to  the  old 
days  of  Samuel  Johnson's  editorship,  and  sees 
the  utter  triviality  and  dullness  of  half  the  an 
notations  of  that  very  able  man,  one  feels  the 
vast  space  of  time  elapsed  between  his  anno 
tations  and  Dr.  Rolfe's.  This  applies  even  to 
notes  that  seem  almost  trivial,  and  many  a  sug 
gestion  or  bit  of  explanation  which  seems  to  a 
mere  private  student  utterly  wasted  can  be  fully 
justified  by  cases  in  which  still  simpler  points 
have  proved  seriously  puzzling  in  the  school 
room. 

It  has  been  said  that  every  Shakespeare 
critic  ended  with  the  desire  to  be  Shakespeare's 
biographer,  although  fortunately  most  of  them 
have  been  daunted  by  discouragement  or  the 
unwillingness  of  booksellers.  Here,  also,  Mr. 
Rolfe's  persistent  courage  has  carried  him 
through,  and  his  work,  aided  by  time  and  new 
discoveries,  has  probably  portrayed,  more  fully 
than  that  of  any  of  his  predecessors,  the  airy  pal 
ace  in  which  the  great  enchanter  dwelt.  How 
far  the  occupant  of  the  palace  still  remains 


324  WILLIAM  JAMES  ROLFE 

also  a  thing  of  air,  we  must  leave  for  Miss  Delia 
Bacon's  school  of  heretics  to  determine.  For 
myself,  I  prefer  to  believe,  with  Andrew  Lang, 
that  "  Shakespeare's  plays  and  poems  were 
written  by  Shakespeare." 


XXII 

GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  A 
CENTURY  AGO 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  A 
CENTURY   AGO 

"  WHENE'ER  with  haggard  eyes  I  view 
This  dungeon  that  I  'm  rotting  in, 
I  think  of  those  companions  true 
Who  studied  with  me  at  the  U- 
niversity  of  Gottingen, 
niversity  of  Gottingen." 

To  the  majority  of  Harvard  graduates  the 
chief  association  with  Gottingen  is  Canning's 
once-famous  squib,  of  which  this  is  the  first 
verse,  in  the  "  Anti-Jacobin."  But  the  histor 
ical  tie  between  the  two  universities  is  far  too 
close  to  be  forgotten ;  and  I  have  lately  come 
into  possession  of  some  quite  interesting  let 
ters  which  demonstrate  this.  They  show  con 
clusively  how  much  the  development  of  Harvard 
College  was  influenced,  nearly  a  century  ago,  by 
the  German  models,  and  how  little  in  compari 
son  by  Oxford  and  Cambridge  ;  and  as  the  let 
ters  are  all  from  men  afterwards  eminent,  and 
pioneers  in  that  vast  band  of  American  students 
who  have  since  studied  in  Germany,  their  youth 
ful  opinions  will  possess  a  peculiar  interest. 

The  three  persons  through  whom  this  influ- 


328  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

ence  most  came  were  Joseph  Green  Cogswell, 
Edward  Everett,  and  George  Ticknor,  all  then 
studying  at  Gottingen.  It  happens  that  they 
had  all  been  intimate  in  my  father's  family,  and 
as  he  was  very  much  interested  in  the  affairs  of 
the  college,  —  of  which  he  became  in  1818  the 
"  Steward  and  Patron,"  and  practically,  as  the 
Reverend  A.  P.  Peabody  assures  us,1  the  Treas 
urer,  —  they  sent  some  of  their  appeals  and  ar 
guments  through  him.  This  paper  will  consist 
chiefly  of  extracts  from  these  letters,  which 
speak  for  themselves  as  to  the  point  of  view  in 
which  the  whole  matter  presented  itself. 

It  will  be  well  to  bear  in  mind  the  following 
details  as  to  the  early  history  of  these  three 
men,  taking  them  in  order  of  age.  Cogswell 
was  born  in  1786,  graduated  (Harvard)  in  1806, 
was  tutor  in  1814-15  (having  previously  tried 
mercantile  life),  and  went  abroad  in  1816.  Tick 
nor  was  born  in  1791,  graduated  (Dartmouth) 
in  1807,  went  to  Germany  in  1815,  and  was 
appointed  professor  of  Modern  Languages  at 
Harvard  in  1817.  Everett  was  born  in  1794, 
graduated  (Harvard)  in  1811,  and  went  abroad 
on  his  appointment  as  Greek  professor  (Har 
vard)  in  1815. 

The  first  of  these   letters   is  from  George 

1  Harvard  Reminiscences,  by  Andrew   Preston  Peabody, 
D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  p.  18. 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  329 

Ticknor,  and  is  a  very  striking  appeal  in  behalf 
of  the  Harvard  College  Library,  which  then 
consisted  of  less  than  20,000  volumes,  although 
the  largest  in  the  United  States,  with  perhaps 
one  exception. 

GOTTINGEN,  May  20, 1816. 

As  you  have  talked  a  good  deal  in  your  letter  about 
the  college  and  its  prospects,  I  suppose  I  may  be 
allowed  to  say  a  few  words  about  it  in  reply,  though 
to  be  sure  I  have  already  said  more  than  was  per 
haps  proper  in  one  like  myself,  who  am  not  even  a 
graduate  there,  and  shall  very,  probably  get  no 
other  answer  to  what  I  may  venture  to  say  here 
after  than  that  I  should  do  better  to  mind  my 
books,  and  let  those  who  are  intrusted  with  the 
affairs  of  ye  (sic)  college  take  care  of  them.  I  can 
not,  however,  shut  my  eyes  on  the  fact,  that  one 
very  important  and  principal  cause  of  the  differ 
ence  between  our  University  and  the  one  here  is  the 
different  value  we  affix  to  a  good  library,  and  the 
different  ideas  we  have  of  what  a  good  library  is. 
In  America  we  look  "on  the  Library  at  Cambridge 
as  a  wonder,  and  I  am  sure  nobody  ever  had  a 
more  thorough  veneration  for  it  than  I  had  ;  but  it 
was  not  necessary  for  me  to  be  here  six  months 
to  find  out  that  it  is  nearly  or  quite  half  a  century 
behind  the  libraries  of  Europe,  and  that  it  is  much 
less  remarkable  that  our  stock  of  learning  is  so 
small  than  that  it  is  so  great,  considering  the  means 
from  which  it  is  drawn  are  so  inadequate.  But  what 


330  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

is  worse  than  the  absolute  poverty  of  our  collections 
of  books  is  the  relative  inconsequence  in  which  we 
keep  them.  We  found  new  professorships  and  build 
new  colleges  in  abundance,  but  we  buy  no  books  ; 
and  yet  it  is  to  me  the  most  obvious  thing  in  the 
world  that  it  would  promote  the  cause  of  learning 
and  the  reputation  of  the  University  ten  times  more 
to  give  six  thousand  dollars  a  year  to  the  Library 
than  to  found  three  professorships,  and  that  it 
would  have  been  wiser  to  have  spent  the  whole  sum 
that  the  new  chapel  had  cost  on  books  than  on  a 
fine  suite  of  halls.  The  truth  is,  when  we  build  up 
a  literary  Institution  in  America  we  think  too  much 
of  convenience  and  comfort  and  luxury  and  show  ; 
and  too  little  of  real,  laborious  study  and  the  means 
that  will  promote  it.  We  have  not  yet  learnt  that 
the  Library  is  not  only  the  first  convenience  of  a 
University,  but  that  it  is  the  very  first  necessity,  — 
that  it  is  the  life  and  spirit,  —  and  that  all  other 
considerations  must  yield  to  the  prevalent  one  of 
increasing  and  opening  it,  and  opening  it  on  the 
most  liberal  terms  to  all  who  are  disposed  to  make 
use  of  it.  I  cannot  better  explain  to  you  the  differ 
ence  between  our  University  in  Cambridge  and  the 
one  here  than  by  telling  you  that  here  I  hardly  say 
too  much  when  I  say  that  it  consists  in  the  Library, 
and  that  in  Cambridge  the  Library  is  one  of  the 
last  things  thought  and  talked  about,  —  that  here 
they  have  forty  professors  and  more  than  two  hun 
dred  thousand  volumes  to  instruct  them,  and  in 
Cambridge  twenty  professors  and  less  than  twenty 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  331 

thousand  volumes.  This,  then,  you  see  is  the  thing 
of  which  I  am  disposed  to  complain,  that  we  give 
comparatively  so  little  attention  and  money  to  the 
Library,  which  is,  after  all,  the  Alpha  and  Omega 
of  the  whole  establishment,  —  that  we  are  mortified 
and  exasperated  because  we  have  no  learned  men, 
and  yet  make  it  physically  impossible  for  our  schol 
ars  to  become  such,  and  that  to  escape  from  this 
reproach  we  appoint  a  multitude  of  professors, 
but  give  them  a  library  from  which  hardly  one  and 
not  one  of  them  can  qualify  himself  to  execute  the 
duties  of  his  office.  You  will,  perhaps,  say  that 
these  professors  do  not  complain.  I  can  only  an 
swer  that  you  find  the  blind  are  often  as  gay  and 
happy  as  those  who  are  blessed  with  sight ;  but 
take  a  Cambridge  professor,  and  let  him  live  one 
year  by  a  library  as  ample  and  as  liberally  adminis 
tered  as  this  is ;  let  him  know  what  it  is  to  be  for 
ever  sure  of  having  the  very  book  he  wants  either 
to  read  or  to  refer  to  ;  let  him  in  one  word  know 
that  he  can  never  be  discouraged  from  pursuing  any 
inquiry  for  want  of  means,  but  on  the  contrary  let 
him  feel  what  it  is  to  have  all  the  excitements  and 
assistance  and  encouragements  which  those  who 
have  gone  before  him  in  the  same  pursuits  can 
give  him,  and  then  at  the  end  of  this  year  set  him 
down  again  under  the  parsimonious  administration 
of  the  Cambridge  library,  —  and  I  will  promise  you 
that  he  shall  be  as  discontented  and  clamorous  as 
my  argument  can  desire. 

But  I  will  trouble  you  no  more  with  my  argument, 


332  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

though  I  am  persuaded  that  the  further  progress  of 
learning  among  us  depends  on  the  entire  change  of 
the  system  against  which  it  is  directed. 

The  next  extract  is  from  a  letter  of  Cogswell's, 
and  gives  a  glimpse  at  the  actual  work  done  by 
these  young  men  :  — 

GOTTINGEN,  March  8,  1817. 

I  must  tell  you  something  about  our  colony  at 
Gottingen  before  I  discuss  other  subjects,  for  you 
probably  care  little  about  the  University  and  its  host 
of  professors,  except  as  they  operate  upon  us.  First 
as  to  the  Professor  (Everett)  and  Dr.  Ticknor,  as 
they  are  called  here  ;  everybody  knows  them  in  this 
part  of  Germany,  and  also  knows  how  to  value  them. 
For  once  in  my  life  I  am  proud  to  acknowledge 
myself  an  American  on  the  European  side  of  the 
Atlantic  :  never  was  a  country  more  fortunate  in  its 
representation  abroad  than  ours  has  been  in  this 
instance  ;  they  will  gain  more  for  us  in  this  respect 
than  even  in  the  treasures  of  learning  they  will  carry 
back.  Little  as  I  have  of  patriotism,  I  delight  to 
listen  to  the  character  which  is  here  given  of  my 
countrymen  ;  I  mean  as  countrymen,  and  not  as 
my  particular  friends  :  the  despondency  which  it 
produces  in  my  own  mind  of  ever  obtaining  a  place 
by  their  sides  is  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the 
gratification  of  my  national  feelings,  to  say  not  a 
word  of  my  individual  attachment.  You  must  not 
think  me  extravagant,  but  I  venture  to  say  that  the 
notions  which  the  European  literati  have  entertained 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  333 

of  America  will  be  essentially  changed  by  G.  and 
E.'s  [Ticknor's  and  Everett's]  residence  on  the 
Continent;  we  were  known  to  be  a  brave,  a  rich, 
and  an  enterprising  people,  but  that  a  scholar  was 
to  be  found  among  us,  or  any  man  who  had  a  de 
sire  to  be  a  scholar,  had  scarcely  been  conceived. 
It  will  also  be  the  means  of  producing  new  cor 
respondences  and  connections  between  the  men  of 
the  American  and  European  sides  of  the  Atlantic, 
and  spread  much  more  widely  among  us  a  know 
ledge  of  the  present  literature  and  science  of  this 
Continent. 

Deducting  the  time  from  the  i3th  of  December 
to  the  2yth  of  January  during  which  I  was  confined 
to  my  room,  I  have  been  pretty  industrious  ;  through 
the  winter  I  behaved  as  well  as  one  could  expect. 
German  has  been  my  chief  study ;  to  give  it  a  re 
lief  I  have  attended  one  hour  a  day  to  a  lecture  in 
Italian  on  the  Modern  Arts,  and,  to  feel  satisfied 
that  I  had  some  sober  inquiry  in  hand,  I  have  de 
voted  another  to  Professor  Saalfeld's  course  of 
European  Statistics,  so  that  I  have  generally  been 
able  to  count  at  night  twelve  hours  of  private  study 
and  private  instruction.  This  has  only  sharpened 
not  satisfied  my  appetite.  I  have  laid  out  for  myself 
a  course  of  more  diligent  labors  the  next  semester. 
I  shall  then  be  at  least  eight  hours  in  the  lecture 
rooms,  beginning  at  six  in  the  morning.  I  must  con 
trive,  besides,  to  devote  eight  other  hours  to  private 
study.  I  am  not  in  the  least  Germanized,  and  yet  it 
appalls  me  when  I  think  of  the  difference  between 


334  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

an  education  here  and  in  America.  The  great  evil 
with  us  is,  in  our  primary  schools,  the  best  years  for 
learning  are  trifled  and  whiled  away ;  boys  learn 
nothing  because  they  have  no  instructors,  because 
we  demand  of  one  the  full  [work  ?]  of  ten,  and  be 
cause  laziness  is  the  first  lesson  which  one  gets  in 
all  our  great  schools.  I  know  very  well  that  we 
want  but  few  closet  scholars,  few  learned  philo 
logists,  and  few  verbal  commentators ;  that  all  our 
systems  of  government  and  customs  and  life  sup 
pose  a  preparation  for  making  practical  men, — 
men  who  move,  and  are  felt  in  the  world ;  but  all 
this  could  be  better  done  without  wasting  every 
year  from  infancy  to  manhood.  The  system  of 
education  here  is  the  very  reverse  of  our  own :  in 
America  boys  are  let  loose  upon  the  work  when 
they  are  children,  and  fettered  when  they  are  sent 
to  our  college ;  here  they  are  cloistered,  too  much 
so  I  acknowledge,  till  they  can  guide  themselves, 
and  then  put  at  their  own  disposal  at  the  univer 
sities.  Luther's  Reformation  threw  all  the  monk 
ish  establishments  in  the  Protestant  countries  into 
the  hands  of  the  Princes,  and  they  very  wisely  ap 
propriated  them  to  the  purposes  of  education,  but 
unluckily  they  have  retained  more  of  the  monastic 
seclusion  than  they  ought.  The  three  great  schools 

in  Saxony,  Pforte,  Meissen,  and are  kept  in 

convents,  and  the  boys  enjoy  little  more  than  the 
liberty  of  a  cloister.  They  are  all  very  famous,  the 
first  more  particularly;  out  of  it  have  come  half 
of  the  great  scholars  of  the  country.  Still  they 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  335 

are  essentially  defective  in  the  point  above  named. 
Just  in  the  neighborhood  of  Gotha  is  the  admirable 
institution  of  Salzmann.  in  a  delightfully  pleasant 
and  healthy  valley ;  his  number  is  limited  to  thirty- 
eight,  and  he  has  twelve  instructors,  —  admits  no 
boy  who  does  not  bring  with  him  the  fairest  char 
acter  :  when  once  admitted  they  become  his  chil 
dren,  and  the  reciprocal  relation  is  cherished  with 
corresponding  tenderness  and  respect.  I  should 
like  to  proceed  a  little  farther  in  this  subject,  but 
the  bottom  of  my  paper  forbids. 

The  following  is  from  Ticknor  again,  and 
shows,  though  without  giving  details,  that  the 
young  men  had  extended  their  observations  be 
yond  Gottingen :  — 

GOTTINGEN,  November  30,  1816. 

DEAR  SIR,  —  On  returning  here  about  a  fortnight 
since,  after  a  journey  through  North  Germany  which 
had  occupied  us  about  two  months,  I  found  your 
kind  letter  of  August  4  waiting  to  welcome  me.  I 
thank  you  for  it  with  all  my  heart,  and  take  the  first 
moment  of  leisure  I  can  find  in  the  busy  commence 
ment  of  a  new  term,  to  answer  it,  that  I  may  soon 
have  the  same  pleasure  again. 

You  say  you  wish  to  hear  from  me  what  hours  of 
relaxation  I  have,  and  what  acquaintances  I  make, 
in  this  part  of  the  Continent.  The  first  is  very  easily 
told,  and  the  last  would  not  have  been  difficult  be 
fore  the  journey  from  which  I  have  just  returned  ; 
but  now  the  number  is  more  than  lean  write  or  you 


336  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

willingly  hear.    However,  I  will  answer  both  your 
inquiries  in  the  spirit  in  which  they  are  made. 

As  to  relaxation,  in  the  sense  of  the  word  in  which 
I  used  to  employ  it  at  home, — meaning  the  hours 
I  lounged  so  happily  away  when  the  weariness  of 
the  evening  came,  on  your  sofa,  and  the  time  I  used 
to  pass  with  my  friends  in  general,  I  know  not  how 
or  why,  but  always  gayly  and  thoughtlessly,  —  of 
this  sort  of  relaxation  I  know  nothing  here  but  the 
end  of  an  evening  which  I  occasionally  permit  my 
self  to  spend  with  Cogswell,  whose  residence  here 
has  in  this  respect  changed  the  whole  color  of  my 
life.  During  the  last  semester,  I  used  to  visit  occa 
sionally  at  about  twenty  houses  in  Gottingen,  chiefly 
as  a  means  of  learning  to  speak  the  language.  As 
the  population  here  is  so  changeable,  and  as  every 
man  is  left  to  live  exactly  as  he  chooses,  it  is  cus 
tomary  for  all  those  who  wish  to  continue  their  in 
tercourse  with  the  persons  resident  here  to  make  a 
call  at  the  beginning  of  each  semester,  which  is  con 
sidered  a  notice  that  they  are  still  here  and  still 
mean  to  go  into  society.  I,  however,  feel  no  longer 
the  necessity  of  visiting  for  the  purpose  of  learning 
German,  and  now  that  Cogswell  is  here  cannot 
desire  it  for  any  other  purpose ;  have  made  visits 
only  to  three  or  four  of  the  professors,  and  shall, 
therefore,  not  go  abroad  at  all.  As  to  exercise,  how 
ever,  I  have  enough.  Three  times  a  day  I  must 
cross  the  city  entirely  to  get  my  lessons.  I  go  out 
twice  besides,  a  shorter  distance  for  dinner  and  a 
fourth  lesson ;  and  four  times  a  week  I  take  an 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  337 

hour's  exercise  for  conscience'  sake  and  my  mother's 
in  the  riding-school.  Four  times  a  week  I  make 
Cogswell  a  visit  of  half  an  hour  after  dinner,  and 
three  times  I  spend  from  nine  to  ten  in  the  even 
ing  with  him,  so  that  I  feel  I  am  doing  quite  right 
and  quite  as  little  as  I  ought  to  do  in  giving  up  the 
remaining  thirteen  hours  of  the  day  to  study,  espe 
cially  as  I  gave  fourteen  to  it  last  winter  without 
injury. 

The  journey  we  have  lately  taken  was  for  the 
express  purpose  of  seeing  all  the  universities  or 
schools  of  any  considerable  name  in  the  country. 
This  in  a  couple  of  months  we  easily  accomplished, 
and  of  course  saw  professors,  directors,  and  school 
masters  —  men  of  great  learning  and  men  of  little 
learning,  and  men  of  no  learning  at  all  —  in  shoals. 

This  is  from  Cogswell  again,  and  is  certainly 
a  clarion  appeal  as  to  the  need  of  thoroughness 
in  teaching  and  learning :  — 

GOTTINGEN,  July  13,  1817. 

I  hope  that  you  and  every  other  person  inter 
ested  in  the  College  are  reconciled  to  Mr.  Everett's 
plan  of  remaining  longer  in  Europe  than  was  at  first 
intended,  as  I  am  sure  you  would  be  do  you  know 
the  use  he  makes  of  his  time,  and  the  benefit  you 
are  all  to  derive  from  his  learning.  Before  I  came 
to  Gottingen  I  used  to  wonder  why  it  was  that  he 
wished  to  remain  here  so  long ;  I  now  wonder  he 
can  consent  to  leave  so  soon.  The  truth  is,  you  all 
mistake  the  cause  of  your  impatience  :  you  believe 


338  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

that  it  comes  from  a  desire  of  seeing  him  at  work 
for  and  giving  celebrity  to  the  College,  but  it  arises 
from  a  wish  to  have  him  in  your  society,  at  your 
dinner-tables,  at  your  suppers,  your  clubs,  and  your 
ladies,  at  your  tea-parties  (you  perceive  I  am  aim 
ing  at  Boston  folks)  :  however,  all  who  have  formed 
such  expectations  must  be  disappointed ;  he  will  find 
that  most  of  these  gratifications  must  be  sacrificed 
to  attain  the  objects  of  a  scholar's  ambition.  What 
can  men  think  when  they  say  that  two  years  are 
sufficient  to  make  a  Greek  scholar  ?  Does  not  every 
body  know  that  it  is  the  labor  of  half  a  common  life 
to  learn  to  read  the  language  with  tolerable  facility  ? 
I  remember  to  have  heard  little  Drisen  say,  a  few 
days  after  I  came  here,  that  he  had  been  spending 
eighteen  years,  at  least  sixteen  hours  a  day,  exclu 
sively  upon  Greek,  and  that  he  could  not  now  read 
a  page  of  the  tragedians  without  a  dictionary.  When 
I  went  home  I  struck  Greek  from  the  list  of  my 
studies ;  I  now  think  no  more  of  attaining  it  than  I 
do  of  becoming  an  astrologer.  In  fact,  the  most 
heart-breaking  circumstance  attending  upon  human 
knowledge  is  that  a  man  can  never  go  any  farther 
than  "  to  know  how  little  's  to  be  known  "  ;  it  fills, 
then,  the  mind  of  scholars  with  despair  to  look 
upon  the  map  of  science,  as  it  does  that  of  the  trav 
eler  to  look  upon  the  map  of  the  earth,  for  both  see 
what  a  mere  speck  can  be  traveled  over,  and  of  that 
speck  how  imperfect  is  the  knowledge  which  is  ac 
quired.  Let  any  one  who  believes  that  he  has  pen 
etrated  the  mysteries  of  all  science,  and  learnt  the 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  339 

powers  and  properties  of  whatever  is  contained  in 
the  kingdoms  of  air,  earth,  fire,  and  water,  but  just 
bring  his  knowledge  to  the  test ;  let  him,  for  ex 
ample,  begin  with  what  seems  the  simplest  of  all 
inquiries,  and  enumerate  the  plants  which  grow 
upon  the  surface  of  the  globe,  and  call  them  by 
their  names,  and,  when  he  finds  that  this  is  beyond 
his  limits,  let  him  descend  to  a  single  class  and 
bring  within  it  all  that  the  unfathomed  caves  of 
ocean  and  the  unclimbed  mountains  bear ;  and  as 
this  is  also  higher  than  he  can  reach,  let  him  go 
still  lower  and  include  only  one  family,  or  a  partic 
ular  species,  or  an  individual  plant,  and  mark  his 
points  of  ignorance  upon  each,  and  then,  if  his  pride 
of  knowledge  is  not  humbled  enough,  let  him  take 
but  a  leaf  or  the  smallest  part  of  the  most  common 
flower,  and  give  a  satisfactory  solution  for  many 
of  the  phenomena  they  exhibit.  But,  you  will  ask, 
is  Gottingen  the  only  place  for  the  acquisition  of 
such  learning  ?  No,  not  the  only,  but  I  believe  far 
the  best  for  such  learning  as  it  is  necessary  for  Mr. 
E.  to  fit  him  to  make  Cambridge  in  some  degree  a 
Gottingen,  and  render  it  no  longer  requisite  to 
depend  upon  the  latter  for  the  formation  of  their 
scholars :  it  is  true  that  very  few  of  what  the  Ger 
mans  call  scholars  are  needed  in  America ;  if  there 
would  only  be  one  thorough  one  to  begin  with,  the 
number  would  soon  be  sufficient  for  all  the  uses 
which  could  be  made  of  them,  and  for  the  literary 
character  of  the  country.  This  one,  I  say,  could 
never  be  formed  there,  because,  in  the  first  place, 


340  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

there  is  no  one  who  knows  how  it  is  to  be  done ; 
secondly,  there  are  no  books,  and  then,  by  the 
habits  of  desultory  study  practiced  there,  are  wholly 
incompatible  with  it.  A  man  as  a  scholar  must  be 
completely  upset>  to  use  a  blacksmith's  phrase  ;  he 
must  have  learnt  to  give  up  his  love  of  society  and 
of  social  pleasures,  his  interest  in  the  common 
occurrences  of  life,  in  the  political  and  religious 
contentions  of  the  country,  and  in  everything  not 
directly  connected  with  his  single  aim.  Is  there  any 
one  willing  to  make  such  a  sacrifice  ?  This  I  cannot 
answer,  but  I  do  assure  you  that  it  is  the  sacrifice 
made  by  almost  every  man  of  classical  learning  in 
Germany,  though  to  be  sure  the  sacrifice  of  the  en 
joyments  of  friendly  intercourse  with  mankind  to  let 
ters  is  paying  much  less  dear  for  fame  here  than  the 
same  thing  would  be  in  America.  For  my  own  part  I 
am  sorry  I  came  here,  because  I  was  too  old  to  be 
upset;  like  a  horseshoe  worn  thin,  I  shall  break  as 
soon  as  I  begin  to  wear  on  the  other  side :  it  makes 
me  very  restless  at  this  period  of  my  life  to  find  that 
I  know  nothing.  I  would  not  have  wished  to  have 
made  the  discovery  unless  I  could  at  the  same  time 
have  been  allowed  to  remain  in  some  place  where  I 
could  get  rid  of  my  ignorance ;  and,  now  that  I  must 
go  from  Gottingen,  I  have  no  hope  of  doing  that. 

The  following  from  Edward  Everett  carries 
the  war  yet  farther  into  Africa,  and  criticises 
not  merely  American  colleges,  but  also  second 
ary  schools  :  — 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  341 

GOTTINGEN,  September  17,  1817. 
You  must  not  laugh  at  me  for  proceeding  to  busi 
ness  the  first  thing,  and  informing  you  in  some 
sort  as  an  argument,  that,  if  I  have  been  unrea 
sonable  in  prolonging  my  stay  here,  I  have  at  least 
passed  my  time  not  wholly  to  disadvantage,  —  that 
I  received  this  morning  my  diploma  as  Doctor  of 
Philosophy  of  this  University,  the  first  American, 
and  as  far  as  I  know,  Englishman,  on  whom  it  has 
ever  been  conferred.  You  will  perhaps  have  heard 
that  it  was  my  intention  to  have  passed  from  this 
University  to  that  of  Oxford,  and  to  have  spent 
this  winter  there.  I  have  altered  this  determination 
for  the  sake  of  joining  forces  with  Theodore  Lyman 
at  Paris  this  winter ;  and  as  he  proposes  to  pass  the 
ensuing  summer  in  traveling  in  the  South  of  France, 
I  shall  take  that  opportunity  of  going  to  England. 
It  is  true  I  should  have  liked  to  have  gone  directly 
from  Gottingen  to  Oxford,  to  have  kept  the  thread 
as  it  were  unbroken,  and  gone  on  with  my  studies 
without  any  interruption.  But  I  find,  even  at  Paris, 
that  I  have  no  object  there  but  study ;  and  Pro 
fessor  Gaisford,  at  Oxford,  writes  me  that  it  is  every 
way  better  that  I  should  be  there  in  summer,  as  the 
Library  is  open  a  greater  part  of  the  day.  Mean 
while,  I  try  to  feel  duly  grateful  to  Providence  and 
my  friends  at  home  to  whom  I  owe  the  opportunity 
of  resorting  to  the  famous  fountains  of  European 
wisdom.  The  only  painful  feeling  I  carry  with  me 
is  that  I  may  not  have  health,  or  strength,  or  abil 
ity  to  fulfill  the  demands  which  such  an  opportunity 


342  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

will  create  and  justify.  More  is  apt  to  be  expected 
in  such  cases  than  it  is  possible  to  perform  ;  besides 
that,  after  the  schoolmaster  is  prepared  for  his  duty, 
all  depends  upon  whether  the  schoolboy  is  also 
prepared  for  his.  You  must  not  allow  any  report  to 
the  contrary  to  shake  your  faith  in  my  good-will  in 
the  cause.  Some  remarks  which  I  committed  to 
paper  at  the  request  of  my  brother  upon  the  subject 
of  a  National  University,  —  an  institution  which  by 
exciting  an  emulation  in  our  quarter  would  be  the 
best  thing  that  could  happen  to  Cambridge,  —  have, 
I  hear,  led  some  good  men  to  believe  that  I  was 
for  deserting  the  service  at  Cambridge  still  more 
promptly  than  I  had  done  ac  Boston,  —  a  suggestion 
certainly  too  absurd  to  have  been  made,  or  to  need 
|  to  have  been  contradicted.  However,  still  more 
"important  than  all  which  national  or  state  universi 
ties  can  do  themselves  immediately,  is  the  necessity 
we  must  impose  on  the  schools  of  reforming  and 
improving  themselves,  or,  rather,  are  the  steps  we 
must  take  to  create  good  schools.  All  we  have  are 
bad,  the  common  reading  and  writing  ones  not 
excepted  j  but  of  schools  which  we  have  to  fit 
boys  for  college,  I  think  the  Boston  Latin  School 
and  the  Andover  Academy  are  the  only  ones  that 
deserve  the  name,  and  much  I  doubt  if  they  deserve 
it.  There  is  much  truth  in  the  remark  so  constantly 
made  that  we  are  not  old  enough  for  European  per 
fection,  but  we  are  old  enough  to  do  well  all  it  is 
worth  while  to  do  at  all ;  and  if  a  child  here  in  eight 
years  can  read  and  speak  Latin  fluently,  there  is  no 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  343 

reason  why  our  youth,  after  spending  the  same  time 
on  it,  should  know  little  or  nothing  about  it.  Pro 
fessional  education  with  us  commences  little  or  no 
earlier  than  it  does  here,  and  yet  we  approach  it  in 
all  departments  with  a  quarter  part  of  the  previous 
qualification  which  is  here  possessed.  But  also  it  is 
the  weakness  of  mankind  to  do  more  than  he  is 
obliged  to.  The  sort  of  obligation,  to  be  sure,  which\ 
is  felt,  differs  with  different  spirits,  and  one  is  con-/ 
tent  to  be  the  first  man  in  his  ward,  one  in  his  town/ 
one  in  his  county,  another  in  his  state.  To  all  these 
degrees  of  dignity  the  present  education  is  ade 
quate  ;  and  we  turn  out  reputable  ministers,  doc 
tors,  lawyers,  professors,  and  schoolmasters,  —  men 
who  get  to  be  as  wise  at  ye  (sic)  age  of  threescore 
as  their  fathers  were  at  sixty,  and  who  transmit  the 
concern  of  life  to  their  children  in  as  good  condi 
tion  as  they  took  it  themselves.  Meanwhile,  the 
physical  and  commercial  progress  of  ye  (sic)  country 
goes  on,  and  more  numerous  doctors  and  more 
ministers  are  turned  out,  not  more  learned  ones,  to 
meet  it.  I  blushed  burning  red  to  the  ears  the  other 
day  as  a  friend  here  laid  his  hand  upon  a  newspaper 
containing  the  address  of  the  students  at  Baltimore 
to  Mr.  Monroe,  with  the  translation  of  it.  It  was 
less  matter  that  the  translation  was  not  English ; 
my  German  friend  could  not  detect  that.  But  that 
the  original  was  not  Latin  I  could  not,  alas !  con 
ceal.  It  was,  unfortunately,  just  like  enough  to  very 
bad  Latin  to  make  it  impossible  to  pass  it  off  for 
Kickapoo  or  Pottawattamy,  which  I  was  at  first  in- 


344  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

clined  to  attempt.  My  German  persisted  in  it  that 
it  was  meant  for  Latin,  and  I  wished  in  my  heart 
that  the  Baltimore  lads  would  stick  to  the  example 
of  their  fathers  and  mob  the  Federalists,  so  they 
would  give  over  this  inhuman  violence  on  the  poor 
old  Romans.  I  say  nothing  of  ye  (sic)  address,  for 
like  all  [illegible]  it  seems  to  have  been  ye  (sic)  ob 
ject,  in  the  majority  of  those  productions,  for  those 
who  made  them  to  compliment,  not  the  President, 
but  themselves.  It  is  a  pity  Dr.  Kirkland's  could 
not  have  been  published  first,  to  serve  as  a  model 
how  they  might  speak  to  the  President  without 
coldness  on  one  side  and  adulation  on  the  other, 
and  of  themselves  without  intrusion  or  forwardness. 

The  following  letter  transfers  Edward  Ever 
ett  to  Oxford,  and  gives  in  a  somewhat  tren 
chant  way  his  unfavorable  criticisms  on  the 
English  universities  of  that  day.  He  subse 
quently  sent  his  son  to  Cambridge,  England, 
but  it  was  forty  years  later  :  — 

OXFORD,  June  6,  1818. 

I  have  been  over  two  Months  in  England,  and 
am  now  visiting  Oxford,  having  passed  a  Week  in 
Cambridge.  There  is  more  teaching  and  more  learn 
ing  in  our  American  Cambridge  than  there  is  in 
both  the  English  Universities  together,  tho'  be 
tween  them  they  have  four  times  Our  number  of 
Students.  The  misfortune  for  us  is  that  our  sub 
jects  are  not  so  hopeful.  We  are  obliged  to  do  at 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  345 

Cambridge  [U.  S.]  that  which  is  done  at  Eton  and 
Westminster,  at  Winchester,  Rugby,  and  Harrow, 
as  well  as  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  Boys  may  go 
to  Eton  at  6,  and  do  go  often  at  8,  10,  and  of  Ne 
cessity  before  12.  They  stay  there  under  excellent 
Masters,  6  Years,  and  then  come  to  the  University. 
Whereas  a  smart  clever  boy  with  us,  will  learn  out, 
even  at  Mr.  Gould's,  in  4  Years,  and  it  was  the  boast 
of  a  very  distinguished  Man  Named  Bird  [Samuel 
Bird,  H.  C.,  1809],  who  was  two  Years  before  me 
at  Cambridge,  that  he  had  fitted  in  160  days.  And 
I  really  think  that  I  could,  in  six  months  teach  a 
mature  lad,  who  was  willing  to  work  hard,  all  the 
Latin  and  Greek  requisite  for  admission. 

This  letter  from  Cogswell  refers  to  George 
Bancroft,  who  was  subsequently  sent  out  by 
Harvard  College,  after  his  graduation  in  1817, 
that  he  might  be  trained  for  the  sendee  of  the 
institution. 

GOTTINGEN,  May  4th,  1819. 

It  was  truly  generous  and  noble  in  the  corpora 
tion  to  send  out  young  Bancroft  in  the  manner  I 
understand  they  did  ;  he  will  reward  them  for  it.  I 
thought  very  much  of  him,  when  I  had  him  under 
my  charge  at  Cambridge,  and  now  he  appears  to 
me  to  promise  a  great  deal  more.  I  know  not  at 
whose  suggestion  this  was  done,  but  from  the  wis 
dom  of  the  measure,  I  should  conclude  it  must  be 
the  President's  ;  it  is  applying  the  remedy  exactly 
when  it  is  most  wanted,  a  taste  once  created  for 


346  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

classical  learning  at  the  College,  and  the  means 
furnished  for  cultivating  it,  and  the  long  desired 
reform  in  education  in  my  opinion  is  virtually 
made ;  knowledge  of  every  other  kind  may  be  as 
well  acquired  among  us,  as  the  purposes  to  which 
it  is  to  be  applied  demand.  We  are  not  wanting  in 
good  lawyers  or  good  physicians,  and  if  we  could 
but  form  a  body  of  men  of  taste  and  letters,  our 
literary  reputation  would  not  long  remain  at  the 
low  stand  which  it  now  is. 

It  appears  from  a  letter  of  my  father's,  four 
teen  years  later  (November  21,  1833),  that, 
after  four  years  abroad,  Mr.  Bancroft's  college 
career  was  a  disappointment,  and  he  was  evi 
dently  regarded  as  a  man  spoiled  by  vanity 
and  self-consciousness,  and  not  commanding  a 
strong  influence  over  his  pupils.  My  father  wrote 
of  these  two  teachers  :  — 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  21  Nov.,  1833. 
Cogswell  at  New  York  to  negotiate.  He  is  much 
better  fitted  for  a  City.  He  loves  society,  bustle, 
fashion,  polish,  and  good  living.  He  would  do  best 
in  some  Mercantile  House  as  a  partner,  say  to  Bank 
ers  like  Prime,  Ward,  and  King.  He  was  at  first  a 
Scholar,  a  Lawyer  in  Maine.  His  wife  dying, — 
sister  to  Dr.  Nichols'  wife  (Gilman),  —  Mr.  C.  went 
abroad.  Was  supercargo,  then  a  residing  agent  of 
Wm.  Gray's  in  Europe,  Holland,  France,  and  Italy  ; 
was  a  good  Merchant ;  expensive  in  his  habits,  he 


GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD  347 

did  not  accumulate  ;  tired  of  roving,  he  accepted 
the  office  of  Librarian  here.  He  would  not  manage 
things  under  control  of  others,  and  so  left  College 
and  sat  up  Round  Hill  School.  His  partner,  Ban 
croft,  —  an  unsuccessful  scholar,  pet  of  Dr.  Kirk- 
land's,  who  like  Everett  had  four  years  abroad, 
mostly  Germany,  and  at  expense  of  College,  — 
came  here  unfit  for  anything.  His  manners,  style 
of  writing,  Theology,  etc.,  bad,  and  as  a  Tutor  only 
the  laughing  butt  of  all  College.  Such  an  one  was 
easily  marked  as  unfit  for  a  School. 

From  whatever  cause,  he  remained  as  tutor 
for  one  year  only  (1822-23),  leaving  Cambridge 
for  the  Round  Hill  School. 

It  would  be  curious  to  dwell  on  the  later 
influence  upon  the  college  of  the  other  men 
from  whom  so  much  was  reasonably  expected. 
Ticknor,  the  only  one  who  was  not  a  Harvard 
graduate,  probably  did  most  for  Harvard  of 
them  all,  for  he  became  professor  of  Modern 
Languages,  and  introduced  in  that  department 
the  elective  system,  which  there  became  really 
the  nucleus  of  the  expanded  system  of  later  days. 
Everett,  when  President,  actually  set  himself 
against  that  method  when  the  attempt  had  been 
made  to  enlarge  it  under  Quincy.  Cogswell  was 
librarian  from  1821  to  1823;  left  Harvard  for 
the  Round  Hill  School,  and  became  ultimately 
the  organizer  of  the  Astor  Library.  Frederic 


348  GOTTINGEN  AND  HARVARD 

Henry  Hedge,  who  had  studied  in  Gottingen  as 
a  schoolboy  and  belonged  to  a  younger  circle,  did 
not  become  professor  until  many  years  later. 

But  while  the  immediate  results  of  personal 
service  to  the  college  on  the  part  of  this  group 
of  remarkable  men  may  have  been  inadequate, 
—  since  even  Ticknor,  ere  parting,  had  with 
the  institution  a  disagreement  never  yet  fully 
elucidated,  —  yet  their  collective  influence  both 
on  Harvard  University  and  on  American  edu 
cation  was  enormous.  They  helped  to  break 
up  that  intellectual  sterility  which  had  begun 
to  show  itself  during  the  isolation  of  a  merely 
colonial  life ;  they  prepared  the  way  for  the 
vast  modern  growth  of  colleges,  schools,  and 
libraries  in  this  country,  and  indirectly  helped 
that  birth  of  a  literature  which  gave  us  Irving, 
Cooper,  Bryant,  and  the  "  North  American 
Review";  and  culminated  later  in  the  brilliant 
Boston  circle  of  authors,  almost  all  of  whom 
were  Harvard  men,  and  all  of  whom  had  felt  the 
Harvard  influence. 


XXIII 
OLD   NEWPORT   DAYS 


OLD   NEWPORT   DAYS 

IT  was  my  good  fortune,  after  discharge  from 
the  army  during  the  Civil  War,  to  dwell  for  a 
time  under  the  hospitable  roof  of  Mrs.  Hannah 
Dame,  in  Newport,  Rhode  Island.  Passing  out  of 
the  front  door  one  day,  just  as  its  bell  rang,  I  saw 
before  me  one  of  the  very  handsomest  men  I 
had  ever  beheld,  as  I  thought.  He  wore  civilian 
dress,  but  with  an  unmistakable  military  air,  and 
held  out  to  me  a  card  of  introduction  from  a  fellow 
officer.  He  had  been  discharged  from  the  army 
on  the  expiration  of  his  term  of  service  with 
the  regiment  he  had  commanded  in  Fremont's 
Mountain  Department.  Being  out  of  employ 
ment  for  a  time,  and  unsettled,  as  many  of  us 
were  at  that  period,  he  came  back  to  his  early 
training  as  a  market  gardener,  and,  having  made 
the  professional  discovery  that  most  of  the  cab 
bages  eaten  in  Boston  were  brought  from  New 
York,  while  nearly  all  the  cauliflowers  sold  in 
New  York  were  sent  thither  from  Boston,  he 
formed  the  plan  of  establishing  a  market  gar 
den  midway  between  the  two  cities,  and  sup 
plying  each  place  with  its  favorite  vegetable. 
This  he  did  successfully  for  ten  years,  and  then 


352  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS 

merged  the  enterprise  in  successive  newer  ones. 
In  these  he  sometimes  failed,  but  in  the  last  one 
he  succeeded  where  others  had  failed  yet  more 
completely,  and  astounded  the  nation  by  bring 
ing  the  streets  of  New  York  into  decent  clean 
liness  and  order  for  the  first  time  on  record. 
This  man  was  Colonel  George  Edward  Waring. 
One  of  his  minor  achievements  was  that  of 
organizing,  at  his  house  in  Newport,  the  most 
efficient  literary  circle  I  ever  knew,  at  a  time 
when  there  were  habitually  more  authors 
grouped  in  that  city  than  anywhere  else  in 
America.  But  before  giving  a  sketch  of  these 
persons,  let  me  describe  the  house  in  which  he 
received  them.  This  house  had  been  made  in 
ternally  the  most  attractive  in  Newport  by  the 
combined  taste  of  himself  and  his  wife,  and  was 
for  a  time  .the  main  centre  of  our  simple  and 
cordial  group.  In  his  study  and  elsewhere  on 
the  walls  he  had  placed  mottoes,  taken  partly 
from  old  English  phrases  and  partly  from  the 
original  Dutch,  remembered  almost  from  the 
cradle  as  coming  from  his  Dutch  maternal 
grandfather.  Thus  above  his  writing-desk  the 
inscription  read,  Miserable  a  mon  grt  qui  ria 
chez  soi  oil  estre  d  soi  (Alas  for  him  who  hath 
no  home  which  is  a  home !).  Under  the  mantel 
piece  and  above  the  fireplace  was  the  Dutch  Eigen 
haasdissgoudwaard(Q\\£s  own  hearth  is  worth 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  353 

gold).  In  the  dining-room  there  was  inscribed 
above  the  fireplace,  "Old  wood  to  burn,  Old 
wine  to  drink,  Old  friends  to  trust."  Opposite 
this  was  again  the  Dutch  Praatjes  vidlen  den 
buik  neit  (Prattle  does  not  fill  the  box).  On  two 
sides  of  the  room  there  were,  "  Now  good  diges 
tion  wait  on  appetite,  and  health  on  both,"  and 
also  "In  every  feast  there  are  two  guests  to  be 
entertained,  the  body  and  the  soul."  In  almost 
every  case  the  lettering  of  these  mottoes  was 
made  into  a  decoration  with  peacock's  feathers, 
and  formed  a  series  of  charming  welcomes 
quite  in  harmony  with  the  unfailing  cordiality 
of  the  host  and  the  fine  and  hearty  voice  of  the 
hostess. 

It  was  at  this  house  that  there  were  to  be 
found  gathered,  more  frequently  than  anywhere 
else,  the  literary  or  artistic  people  who  were 
then  so  abundant  in  Newport,  —  where  no  other 
house  was  to  be  compared  with  it  except  that 
of  Mrs.  Howe,  who  then  lived  in  the  country, 
and  had  receptions  and  a  world  of  her  own. 

We  had,  for  instance,  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  now 
best  known  as  the  original  founder  of  the  "Cen 
tury  Magazine,"  then  having  but  a  fugitive  lit 
erary  fame  based  on  books  written  under  the 
name  of  Timothy  Titcomb  and  entitled  "  Bitter- 
Sweet "  and  "  Kathrina,  Her  Life  and  Mine." 
He  was  personally  attractive  because  of  his 


354  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS 

melodious  voice,  which  made  him  of  peculiar 
value  for  singing  on  all  boating  excursions. 
There  was  Edwin  P.  Whipple,  a  man  reared  in 
business,  not  literature ;  but  with  an  inexhaust 
ible  memory  of  books  and  a  fertile  gift  for  pro 
ducing  them,  especially  those  requiring  personal 
anecdote  and  plenty  of  it.  There  was  Dr.  O.  W. 
Holmes,  who  came  to  Newport  as  the  guest  of 
the  Astor  family,  parents  of  the  present  Eng 
lish  author  of  that  name.  At  their  house  I  spent 
one  evening  with  Holmes,  who  was  in  his  most 
brilliant  mood,  at  the  end  of  which  he  had 
talked  himself  into  such  an  attack  of  asthma 
that  he  had  to  bid  adieu  to  Newport  forever, 
after  an  early  breakfast  the  next  morning. 

There  was  the  Reverend  Charles  T.  Brooks, 
a  man  of  angelic  face  and  endless  German  trans 
lations,  who  made  even  Jean  Paul  readable  and 
also  unbelievable.  There  was  Professor  George 
Lane,  from  Harvard,  a  man  so  full  of  humor 
that  people  bought  his  new  Latin  Grammar 
merely  for  the  fun  to  be  got  out  of  its  notes. 
There  was  La  Farge,  just  passing  through  the 
change  which  made  a  great  artist  out  of  a  book- 
lover  and  a  student  of  languages.  He  alone  on 
this  list  made  Newport  his  home  for  years,  and 
reared  his  gifted  and  attractive  children  there, 
and  it  was  always  interesting  to  see  how,  one 
by  one,  they  developed  into  artists  or  priests. 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  355 

There  was  George  Boker,  of  Philadelphia,  a 
young  man  of  fortune,  handsome,  indolent,  as 
poetic  as  a  rich  young  man  could  spare  time  to 
be,  and  one  whose  letters  now  help  to  make 
attractive  that  most  amusing  book,  the  "  Me 
moirs  of  Charles  Godfrey  Leland."  There  was 
my  refined  and  accomplished  schoolmate  and 
chum,  Charles  Perkins,  who  trained  himself 
in  Italian  art  and  tried  rather  ineffectually  to 
introduce  it  into  the  public  schools  of  Boston 
and  upon  the  outside  of  the  Art  Museum.  There 
was  Tom  Appleton,  the  man  of  two  continents, 
and  Clarence  King,  the  explorer  of  this  one, 
and  a  charming  story-teller,  by  the  way.  Let 
me  pause  longer  over  one  or  two  of  these  many 
visitors. 

One  of  them  was  long  held  the  most  read 
able  of  American  biographers,  but  is  now  being 
strangely  forgotten,  —  the  most  American  of  all 
transplanted  Englishmen,  James  Parton,  the 
historian.  He  has  apparently  dropped  from  our 
current  literature  and  even  from  popular  mem 
ory.  I  'can  only  attribute  this  to  a  certain  curi 
ous  combination  of  strength  and  weakness 
which  was  more  conspicuous  in  him  than  in 
most  others.  He  always  appeared  to  me  the 
most  absolutely  truthful  being  I  had  ever  en 
countered  ;  no  temptation,  no  threats,  could 
move  him  from  his  position  ;  but  when  he  came 


356  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS 

in  contact  with  a  man  of  wholly  opposite  tem 
perament,  as,  for  instance,  General  Benjamin 
F.  Butler,  the  other  seemed  able  to  wind  Par- 
ton  round  his  fingers.  This  would  be  the  harder 
to  believe  had  not  Butler  exerted  something  of 
the  same  influence  on  Wendell  Phillips,  an 
other  man  of  proud  and  yet  trustful  tempera 
ment.  Furthermore,  Parton  was  absolutely  en 
thralled  in  a  similar  way  through  his  chief  object 
of  literary  interest,  perhaps  as  being  the  man 
in  the  world  most  unlike  him,  Voltaire.  On  the 
other  hand,  no  one  could  be  more  devoted  to 
self-sacrifice  than  Parton  when  it  became  clear 
and  needful.  Day  after  day  one  would  see  him 
driving  in  the  roads  around  Newport,  with  his 
palsy-stricken  and  helpless  wife,  ten  years  older 
than  himself  and  best  known  to  the  world  as 
Fanny  Fern,  —  he  sitting  upright  as  a  flagstaff 
and  looking  forward  in  deep  absorption,  settling 
some  Voltairean  problem  a  hundred  years  older 
than  his  own  domestic  sorrow. 

I  find  in  my  diary  (June  25,  1871)  only  this 
reference  to  one  of  the  disappointing  visitors 
at  Newport : — 

"  Bret  Harte  is  always  simple  and  modest. 
He  is  terribly  tired  of  'The  Heathen  Chinee/ 
and  almost  annoyed  at  its  popularity  when  bet 
ter  things  of  his  have  been  less  liked"  —  the 
usual  experience  of  authors. 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  357 

I  find  again,  May  15,  1871 :  "I  went  up  last 
Wednesday  night  to  the  Grand  Army  banquet 
[in  Boston]  and  found  it  pleasant.  The  recep 
tions  of  Hooker  and  Burnside  were  especially 
ardent.  At  our  table  we  were  about  to  give 
three  cheers  for  Bret  Harte  as  a  man  went  up 
to  the  chief  table.  It  turned  out  to  be  Mayor 
Gaston."  This  mistake,  however,  showed  Harte's 
ready  popularity  at  first,  though  some  obstacles 
afterwards  tended  to  diminish  it.  Among  these 
obstacles  was  to  be  included,  no  doubt,  the  San 
Francisco  newspapers,  which  were  constantly 
showered  among  us  from  the  Pacific  shores 
with  all  the  details  of  the  enormous  debts  which 
Bret  Harte  had  left  behind  him,  and  which  he 
never  in  his  life,  so  far  as  I  could  hear,  made 
a  serious  effort  to  discharge.  Through  some 
distrust  either  of  my  friendship  or  of  my  re 
sources,  he  never  by  any  chance  even  offered,  I 
believe,  to  borrow  a  dollar  of  me;  but  our  more 
generous  companion,  George  Waring,  was  not 
so  fortunate. 

Another  person,  of  nobler  type,  appears  but 
imperfectly  in  my  letters,  namely,  Miss  Char 
lotte  Cushman.  I  find,  to  be  sure,  the  following 
penetrating  touches  from  a  companion  who  had 
always  that  quality,  and  who  says  of  Miss  Cush 
man,  in  her  diary:  "She  is  very  large,  looks  like 
an  elderly  man,  with  gray  hair  and  very  red 


358  OLD   NEWPORT  DAYS 

cheeks  —  full  of  action  and  gesture —  acts  a  dog 
just  as  well  as  a  man  or  woman.  She  seems  large- 
hearted,  kind,  and  very  bright  and  quick  —  looks 
in  splendid  health.  She  will  be  here  for  this 
month,  but  may  take  a  house  and  return."  This 
expectation  was  fulfilled,  and  I  find  that  the 
same  authority  later  compared  Miss  Cushman 
in  appearance  to  "an  old  boy  given  to  eating 
apples  and  snowballing  " ;  and,  again,  gave  this 
description  after  seeing  Miss  Cushman's  new 
house:  "The  wildest  turn  of  an  insane  kalei 
doscope —  the  petrified  antics  of  a  crazy  coon 
—  with  a  dance  of  intoxicated  lightning-rods 
breaking  out  over  the  roof."  This  youthful  im 
pulsiveness  was  a  part  of  her,  and  I  remember 
that  once,  as  we  were  driving  across  the  first 
beach  at  Newport,  Miss  Cushman  looked  with 
delight  across  the  long  strip  of  sand,  which  the 
advancing  waves  were  rapidly  diminishing,  as 
the  little  boys  were  being  driven  ashore  by  them, 
and  exclaimed,  "  How  those  children  have  en 
joyed  running  their  little  risk  of  danger  !  I  know 
I  did  when  I  was  a  boy,"  and  there  seemed  no 
thing  incongruous  in  the  remark,  nor  yet  when 
she  turned  to  me  afterwards  and  asked,  seri 
ously,  whether  I  thought  suicide  absolutely  un 
pardonable  in  a  person  proved  to  be  hopelessly 
destined  to  die  of  cancer,  — a  terror  with  which 
she  was  long  haunted.  Again,  I  remember  at 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  359 

one  fashionable  reception  how  Miss  Cushman 
came  with  John  Gilbert,  the  veteran  actor,  as 
her  guest,  and  how  much  higher  seemed  their 
breeding,  on  the  whole,  than  that  of  the  mere 
fashionables  of  a  day. 

Kate  Field,  who  has  been  somewhat  unwisely 
canonized  by  an  injudicious  annotator,  was 
much  in  Newport,  equally  fearless  in  body  and 
mind,  and  perhaps  rather  limited  than  enlarged 
by  early  contact  with  Italy  and  Mrs.  Browning. 
She  would  come  in  from  a  manly  boating-trip 
and  fling  herself  on  the  sofa  of  the  daintiest 
hostess,  where  the  subsequent  arrival  of  the 
best-bred  guests  did  not  disturb  her  from  her 
position ;  but  nothing  would  have  amused  her 
more  than  the  deification  which  she  received 
after  death  from  some  later  adorers  of  her  own 
sex. 

I  find  the  following  sketches  of  different 
Newport  visitors  in  a  letter  dated  September 
2,  1869:  — 

"  We  had  an  elder  poet  in  Mr.  [William  Cullen] 
Bryant,  on  whom  I  called,  and  to  my  great  surprise 
he  returned  it.  I  never  saw  him  before.  There  is 
a  little  hardness  about  him,  and  he  seems  like  one 
who  has  been  habitually  bored,  but  he  is  refined 
and  gentle  —  thinner,  older,  and  more  sunken  than 
his  pictures  —  eyes  not  fine,  head  rather  narrow 
and  prominent ;  delicate  in  outline.  He  is  quite 


360  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS 

agreeable,  and chatted  to  him  quite  easily. 

I  saw  him  several  times,  but  he  does  not  warm  one. 

"  At  Governor  Morgan's  I  went  to  a  reception  for 
the  [General]  Grants.  He  is  a  much  more  notice 
able  man  than  I  expected,  and  I  should  think  his 
head  would  attract  attention  anywhere,  and  Richard 
Greenough  [the  sculptor]  thought  the  same  —  and 
so  imperturbable  —  without  even  a  segar !  Mrs. 
Grant  I  found  intelligent  and  equable.  .  .  .  Sher 
man  was  there,  too,  the  antipodes  of  Grant ;  nervous 
and  mobile,  looking  like  a  country  schoolmaster. 
He  said  to  Bryant,  in  my  hearing,  '  Yes,  indeed  ! 
I  know  Mr.  Bryant ;  he  's  one  of  the  veterans ! 
When  I  was  a  boy  at  West  Point  he  was  a  veteran. 
He  used  to  edit  a  newspaper  then  ! ' 

"This  quite  ignored  Mr.  Bryant's  poetic  side, 
which  Sherman  possibly  may  not  have  quite  en 
joyed.  Far  more  interesting  than  this,  I  thought, 
was  a  naval  reception  where  Farragut  was  given 
profuse  honors,  yet  held  them  all  as  a  trivial 
pleasure  compared  to  an  interview  with  his  early 
teacher,  Mr.  Charles  Folsom,  the  superintendent  of 
the  University  Printing-Office  at  Cambridge.  To  him 
the  great  admiral  returned  again  and  again,  and  we 
saw  them  sitting  with  hands  clasped,  and  serving 
well  enough,  as  some  one  suggested,  for  a  group  of 
'  War  and  Peace,'  such  as  the  sculptors  were  just 
then  portraying." 

Most  interesting,  too,  I  found  on  one  occa 
sion,  at  Charles  Perkins's,  the  companionship 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  361 

of  two  young  Englishmen,  James  Bryce  and 
Albert  Dicey,  both  since  eminent,  but  then 
just  beginning  their  knowledge  of  this  country. 
I  vividly  remember  how  Dicey  came  in  rubbing 
his  hands  with  delight,  saying  that  Bryce  had 
just  heard  a  boarder  at  the  hotel  where  he  was 
staying  say  European  twice,  and  had  stopped  to 
make  a  note  of  it  in  his  diary.  But  I  cannot  allow 
further  space  to  them,  nor  even  to  Mr.  George 
Bancroft,  about  whom  the  reader  will  find  a 
more  ample  sketch  in  this  volume  (page  95).  I 
will,  however,  venture  to  repeat  one  little  scene 
illustrating  with  what  parental  care  he  used  to 
accompany  young  ladies  on  horseback  in  his 
old  age,  galloping  over  the  Newport  beaches. 
On  one  of  these  occasions,  after  he  had  dis 
mounted  to  adjust  his  fair  companion's  stirrup, 
he  was  heard  to  say  to  her  caressingly,  "  Don't 
call  me  Mr.  Bancroft,  call  me  George ! " 

In  regard  to  my  friend,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward 
Howe  and  her  Newport  life,  I  have  written  so 
fully  of  her  in  the  article  on  page  287  of  this 
volume  that  I  shall  hardly  venture  it  again. 
Nor  have  I  space  in  which  to  dwell  on  the  fur 
ther  value  to  our  little  Newport  circle  of  such 
women  as  Katharine  P.  Wormeley,  the  well- 
known  translator  of  Balzac  and  Moliere  and  the 
author  of  " Hospital  Transports"  during  the 
war ;  or  of  the  three  accomplished  Woolsey 


362  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS 

sisters,  of  whom  the  eldest,  under  the  name  of 
"Susan  Coolidge,"  became  a  very  influential 
writer  for  young  people.  She  came  first  to 
Newport  as  the  intimate  friend  of  Mrs.  Helen 
Maria  Fiske  Hunt,  who  was  more  generally 
known  for  many  years  as  "  H.  H."  The  latter 
came  among  us  as  the  widow  of  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  officers  whom  the  West 
Point  service  had  reared.  She  was  destined  in 
all  to  spend  five  winters  at  Newport,  and  en 
tered  upon  her  literary  life  practically  at  that 
time.  She  lived  there  as  happily,  perhaps,  as  she 
could  have  dwelt  in  any  town  which  she  could 
christen  "  Sleepy  Hollow,"  as  she  did  Newport ; 
and  where  she  could  look  from  her  window  upon 
the  fashionable  avenue  and  see,  she  said,  such 
"  Headless  Horsemen  "  as  Irving  described  as 
having  haunted  the  valley  of  that  name. 

After  her  second  marriage  she  lived  far  away 
at  the  middle  and  then  at  the  extreme  western 
part  of  the  continent,  and  we  met  but  few  times. 
She  wrote  to  me  freely,  however,  and  I  cannot  do 
better  than  close  by  quoting  from  this  brilliant 
woman's  very  words  her  description  of  the  man 
ner  in  which  she  wrote  the  tale  "  Ramona,"  now 
apparently  destined  to  be  her  source  of  perma 
nent  fame.  I  do  not  know  in  literary  history  so 
vivid  a  picture  of  what  may  well  be  called  spirit 
ual  inspiration  in  an  impetuous  woman's  soul. 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  363 

THE  BERKELEY,  February  5,  1884. 

I  am  glad  you  say  you  are  rejoiced  that  I  am 
writing  a  story.  But  about  the  not  hurrying  it —  I 
want  to  tell  you  something  —  You  know  I  have 
for  three  or  four  years  longed  to  write  a  story  that 
should  "  tell "  on  the  Indian  question.  But  I  knew 
I  could  not  do  it.  knew  I  had  no  background  — 
no  local  color  for  it. 

Last  Spring,  in  So.  Cal.  [Southern  California] 
I  began  to  feel  that  I  had  —  that  the  scene  laid 
there  —  &  the  old  Mexican  life  mixed  in  with  just 
enough  Indian,  to  enable  me  to  tell  what  had  hap 
pened  to  them  —  would  be  the  very  perfection  of 
coloring.  You  know  I  have  now  lived  six  months  in 
So.  Cal. 

Still  I  did  not  see  my  way  clear ;  got  no  plot ; 
till  one  morning  late  last  October,  before  I  was 
wide  awake,  the  whole  plot  flashed  into  my  mind  — 
not  a  vague  one  —  the  whole  story  just  as  it  stands 
to-day :  in  less  than  five  minutes  :  as  if  some  one 
spoke  it.  I  sprang  up,  went  to  my  husband's  room, 
and  told  him  :  I  was  half  frightened.  From  that 
time  till  I  came  here  it  haunted  me,  becoming 
more  and  more  vivid.  I  was  impatient  to  get  at  it. 
I  wrote  the  first  word  of  it  Dec.  ist.  As  soon  as 
I  began  it  seemed  impossible  to  write  fast  enough. 
In  spite  of  myself,  I  write  faster  than  I  would  write 
a  letter.  I  write  two  thousand  to  three  thousand 
words  in  a  morning,  and  I  cannot  help  it.  It  racks 
me  like  a  struggle  with  an  outside  power.  I  cannot 
help  being  superstitious  about  it.  I  have  never  done 


364  OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS 

half  the  amount  of  work  in  the  same  time.  Ordi 
narily  it  would  be  a  simple  impossibility.  Twice 
since  beginning  it  I  have  broken  down  utterly  for 
a  while — with  a  cold  ostensibly,  but  with  great 
nervous  prostration  added.  What  I  have  to  endure 
in  holding  myself  away  from  it,  afternoons,  on  the 
days  I  am  compelled  to  be  in  the  house,  no  words 
can  tell.  It  is  like  keeping  away  from  a  lover,  whose 
hand  I  can  reach  ! 

Now  you  will  ask  what  sort  of  English  it  is  I  write 
at  this  lightning  speed.  So  far  as  I  can  tell,  the 
best  I  ever  wrote  !  I  have  read  it  aloud  as  I  have 
gone  on,  to  one  friend  of  keen  literary  perceptions 
and  judgment,  the  most  purely  intellectual  woman 
I  know  —  Mrs.  Trimble.  She  says  it  is  smooth, 
strong,  clear —  "  Tremendous  "  is  her  frequent  epi 
thet.  I  read  the  first  ten  chapters  to  Miss  Woolsey 
this  last  week  —  she  has  been  spending  a  few 
days  with  me  ...  but  she  says,  "  Far  better  than 
anything  you  ever  have  done." 

The  success  of  it  —  if  it  succeeds  —  will  be  that 
I  do  not  even  suggest  my  Indian  history  till  the 
interest  is  so  assured  in  the  heroine  —  and  hero  — 
that  people  will  not  lay  the  book  down.  There  is 
but  one  Indian  fin  the  story. 

Every  now  &  then  I  force  myself  to  stop  &  write 
a  short  story  or  a  bit  of  verse :  I  can't  bear  the 
strain  :  but  the  instant  I  open  the  pages  of  the  other 
I  write  as  I  am  writing  now  —  as  fast  as  I  could 
copy  !  What  do  you  think  ?  Am  I  possessed  of  a  de 
mon  ?  Is  it  a  freak  of  mental  disturbance,  or  what  ? 


OLD  NEWPORT  DAYS  365 

I  have  the  feeling  that  if  I  could  only  read  it 
to  you,  you  would  know.  If  it  is  as  good  as  Mrs. 
Trimble,  Mr.  Jackson  &  Miss  Woolsey  think,  I 
shall  be  indeed  rewarded,  for  it  will  "  tell."  But  I 
can't  believe  it  is.  I  am  uneasy  about  it  —  but  try 
as  I  may,  all  I  can,  I  cannot  write  slowly  for  more 
than  a  few  moments.  I  sit  down  at  9.30  or  10,  & 
it  is  one  before  I  know  it.  In  good  weather  I  then 
go  out,  after  lunching,  and  keep  out,  religiously  till 
five  :  but  there  have  not  been  more  than  three 
out  of  eight  good  days  all  winter  :  —  and  the  days 
when  I  am  shut  up,  in  my  room  from  two  till  five, 
alone  —  with  my  Ramona  and  Alessandro,  and  can 
not  go  along  with  them  on  their  journey,  are  mad 
dening. 

"  Fifty-two  last  October  and  I  'm  not  a  bit  steadier- 
headed,  you  see,  than  ever !  I  don't  know  whether 
to  send  this  or  burn  it  up.  Don't  laugh  at  me  what 
ever  you  do. 

Yours  always,  H.  J. 


XXIV 

A  HALF-CENTURY  OF  AMER 
ICAN  LITERATURE 


A  HALF-CENTURY  OF  AMER 
ICAN  LITERATURE 

(1857-1907) 

i 

THE  brilliant  French  author,  Stendhal,  used 
to  describe  his  ideal  of  a  happy  life  as  dwelling 
in  a  Paris  garret  and  writing  endless  plays  and 
novels.  This  might  seem  to  any  Anglo-Amer 
ican  a  fantastic  wish ;  and  no  doubt  the  early 
colonists  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean, 
after  fighting  through  the  Revolution  by  the 
aid  of  Rochambeau  and  his  Frenchmen,  might 
have  felt  quite  out  of  place  had  they  followed 
their  triumphant  allies  back  to  Europe,  in  1781, 
and  inspected  their  way  of  living.  We  can 
hardly  wonder,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  ac 
complished  French  traveler,  Philarete  Chasles, 
on  visiting  this  country  in  1851,  looked  through 
the  land  in  despair  at  not  finding  a  humorist, 
although  the  very  boy  of  sixteen  who  stood 
near  him  at  the  rudder  of  a  Mississippi  steam 
boat  may  have  been  he  who  was  destined  to 
amuse  the  civilized  world  under  the  name  of 
Mark  Twain.1 

1  "  Toute  1'  Amerique  ne  possede  pas  un  humoriste."  £tudes 
sur  la  Litterature  et  les  Maeurs  des  Anglo- Amtricains,  Paris, 
1851. 


370  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

That  which  was,  however,  to  astonish  most 
seriously  all  European  observers  who  were 
watching  the  dawn  of  the  young  American 
republic,  was  its  presuming  to  develop  itself 
in  its  own  original  way,  and  not  conventionally. 
It  was  destined,  as  Cicero  said  of  ancient  Rome, 
to  produce  its  statesmen  and  orators  first,  and 
its  poets  later.  Literature  was  not  inclined  to 
show  itself  with  much  promptness,  during  and 
after  long  years  of  conflict,  first  with  the  In 
dians,  then  with  the  mother  country.  There 
were  individual  instances  of  good  writing :  Judge 
Sewall's  private  diaries,  sometimes  simple  and 
noble,  sometimes  unconsciously  eloquent,  often 
infinitely  amusing;  William  Byrd's  and  Sarah 
Knight's  piquant  glimpses  of  early  Virginia 
travel ;  Cotton  Mather's  quaint  and  sometimes 
eloquent  passages ;  Freneau's  poetry,  from  which 
Scott  and  Campbell  borrowed  phrases.  Behind 
all,  there  was  the  stately  figure  of  Jonathan 
Edwards  standing  gravely  in  the  background, 
like  a  monk  at  the  cloister  door,  with  his  trea 
tise  on  the  "  Freedom  of  the  Will." 

Thus  much  for  the  scanty  literary  product ; 
but  when  we  turn  to  look  for  a  new-born  states 
manship  in  a  nation  equally  new-born,  the  fact 
suddenly  strikes  us  that  the  intellectual  strength 
of  the  colonists  lay  there.  The  same  discovery 
astonished  England  through  the  pamphlet  works 


AMERICAN    LITERATURE  371 

of  Jay,  Lee,  and  Dickinson;  destined  to  be 
soon  followed  up  with  a  long  series  of  equally 
strong  productions,  to  which  Lord  Chatham 
paid  that  fine  tribute  in  his  speech  before  the 
House  of  Lords  on  January  20,  1775.  "I  must 
declare  and  avow,"  he  said,  "that  in  all  my 
reading  and  observation  —  and  it  has  been  my 
favorite  study  —  I  have  read  Thucydides  and 
have  studied  and  admired  the  master-states  of 
the  world  —  for  solidity  of  reasoning,  force  of 
sagacity,  and  wisdom  of  conclusion,  under  such 
a  complication  of  difficult  circumstances,  no  na 
tion,  or  body  of  men,  can  stand  in  preference 
to  the  general  Congress  of  Philadelphia."  Yet 
it  is  to  be  noticed  further  that  here,  as  in  other 
instances,  the  literary  foresight  in  British  criti 
cism  had  already  gone  in  advance  of  even  the 
statesman's  judgment,  for  Horace  Walpole, 
the  most  brilliant  of  the  literary  men  of  his 
time,  had  predicted  to  his  friend  Mason,  two 
years  before  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
that  there  would  one  day  be  a  Thucydides  in 
Boston  and  a  Xenophon  in  New  York. 

It  is  interesting  to  know  that  such  predictions 
were  by  degrees  shadowed  forth  even  among 
children  in  America,  as  they  certainly  were 
among  those  of  us  who,  living  in  Cambridge  as 
boys,  were  permitted  the  privilege  of  looking 
over  whole  boxes  of  Washington's  yet  unprinted 


372  AMERICAN    LITERATURE 

letters  in  the  hands  of  our  kind  neighbor,  Jared 
Sparks  (1834-37);  manuscripts  whose  curved 
and  varied  signatures  we  had  the  inexhaustible 
boyish  pleasure  of  studying  and  comparing ;  as 
we  had  also  that  of  enjoying  the  pithy  wisdom 
of  Franklin  in  his  own  handwriting  a  few  years 
later  (1840),  in  the  hands  of  the  same  kind  and 
neighborly  editor.  But  it  was  not  always  recog 
nized  by  those  who  grew  up  in  the  new-born 
nation  that  in  the  mother  country  itself  a  period 
of  literary  ebb  tide  was  then  prevailing.  When 
Fisher  Ames,  being  laid  on  the  shelf  as  a  Fed 
eralist  statesman,  wrote  the  first  really  impor 
tant  essay  on  American  Literature, — an  essay 
published  in  1809,  after  his  death,  —  he  frankly 
treated  literature  itself  as  merely  one  of  the 
ornaments  of  despotism.  He  wrote  of  it,  "The 
time  seems  to  be  near,  and,  perhaps,  is  already 
arrived,  when  poetry,  at  least  poetry  of  tran 
scendent  merit,  will  be  considered  among  the 
lost  arts.  It  is  a  long  time  since  England  has 
produced  a  first-rate  poet.  If  America  had  not 
to  boast  at  all  what  our  parent  country  boasts 
no  longer,  it  will  not  be  thought  a  proof  of  the 
deficiency  of  our  genius."  Believing  as  he  did, 
that  human  freedom  could  never  last  long  in  a 
democracy,  Ames  thought  that  perhaps,  when 
liberty  had  given  place  to  an  emperor,  this 
monarch  might  desire  to  see  splendor  in  his 


AMERICAN   LITERATURE  373 

court,  and  to  occupy  his  subjects  with  the  cul 
tivation  of  the  arts  and  sciences.  At  any  rate, 
he  maintained,  "After  some  ages  we  shall  have 
many  poor  and  a  few  rich,  many  grossly  igno 
rant,  a  considerable  number  learned,  and  a  few 
eminently  learned.  Nature,  never  prodigal  of 
her  gifts,  will  produce  some  men  of  genius, 
who  will  be  admired  and  imitated."  The  first 
part  of  this  prophecy  failed,  but  the  latter  part 
fulfilled  itself  in  a  manner  quite  unexpected. 

ii 

The  point  unconsciously  ignored  by  Fisher 
Ames,  and  by  the  whole  Federalist  party  of 
his  day,  was  that  there  was  already  being 
created  on  this  side  of  the  ocean,  not  merely  a 
new  nation,  but  a  new  temperament.  How  far 
this  temperament  was  to  arise  from  a  change 
of  climate,  and  how  far  from  a  new  political 
organization,  no  one  could  then  foresee,  nor  is 
its  origin  yet  fully  analyzed  ;  but  the  fact  itself 
is  now  coming  to  be  more  and  more  recognized. 
It  may  be  that  Nature  said,  at  about  that  time, 
"'Thus  far  the  English  is  my  best  race;  but 
we  have  had  Englishmen  enough ;  now  for  an 
other  turning  of  the  globe,  and  a  further  novelty. 
We  need  something  with  a  little  more  buoyancy 
than  the  Englishman :  let  us  lighten  the  struc 
ture,  even  at  some  peril  in  the  process.  Put  in 


374  AMERICAN    LITERATURE 

one  drop  more  of  nervous  fluid  and  make  the 
American.'  With  that  drop,  a  new  range  of  pro 
mise  opened  on  the  human  race,  and  a  lighter, 
finer,  more  highly  organized  type  of  mankind 
was  born."  This  remark,  which  appeared  first 
in  the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  called  down  the 
wrath  of  Matthew  Arnold,  who  missed  the 
point  entirely  in  calling  it  "  tall  talk  "  or  a  spe 
cies  of  brag,  overlooking  the  fact  that  it  was 
written  as  a  physiological  caution  addressed 
to  this  nervous  race  against  overworking  its 
children  in  school.  In  reality,  it  was  a  point  of 
the  greatest  importance.  If  Americans  are  to 
be  merely  duplicate  Englishmen,  Nature  might 
have  said,  the  experiment  is  not  so  very  in 
teresting,  but  if  they  are  to  represent  a  new 
human  type,  the  sooner  we  know  it,  the  bet 
ter.  No  one  finally  did  more  toward  recog 
nizing  this  new  type  than  did  Matthew  Arnold 
himself,  when  he  afterwards  wrote,  in  1887, 
"Our  countrymen  [namely,  the  English],  with 
a  thousand  good  qualities,  are  really,  perhaps, 
a  good  deal  wanting  in  lucidity  and  flexibility" ; 
and  again  in  the  same  essay,  "The  whole 
American  nation  may  be  called  'intelligent,' 
that  is  to  say,  'quick.'"1  This  would  seem  to 
yield  the  whole  point  between  himself  and 
the  American  writer  whom  he  had  criticised, 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  xxii,  324,  319. 


AMERICAN    LITERATURE  375 

and  who  happened  to  be  the  author  of  this  pre 
sent  volume. 

One  of  the  best  indications  of  this  very  differ 
ence  of  temperament,  even  to  this  day,  is  the  way 
in  which  American  journalists  and  magazinists 
are  received  in  England,  and  their  English  com 
peers  among  ourselves.  An  American  author 
connected  with  the  "St.  Nicholas  Magazine" 
was  told  by  a  London  publisher,  within  my 
recollection,  that  the  plan  of  the  periodical  was 
essentially  wrong.  "The  pages  of  riddles  at 
the  end,  for  instance,"  he  said,  "  no  child  would 
ever  guess  them"  ;  and  although  the  American 
assured  him  that  they  were  guessed  regularly 
every  month  in  twenty  thousand  families  or 
more,  the  publisher  still  shook  his  head.  As 
to  the  element  of  humor  itself,  it  used  to  be 
the  claim  of  a  brilliant  New  York  talker  that 
he  had  dined  through  three  English  counties  on 
the  strength  of  the  jokes  which  he  had  found 
in  the  corners  of  an  old  American  "  Farmer's 
Almanac"  which  he  had  happened  to  put  into 
his  trunk  when  packing  for  his  European  trip. 

From  Brissot  and  Volney,  Chastellux  and 
Crevecceur,  down  to  Ampere  and  De  Tocque- 
ville,  there  was  a  French  appreciation,  denied 
to  the  English,  of  this  lighter  quality;  and  this 
certainly  seems  to  indicate  that  the  change  in 
the  Anglo-American  temperament  had  already 


376  AMERICAN    LITERATURE 

begun  to  show  itself.  Ampere  especially  notices 
what  he  calls  "une  veine  europeenne"  among 
the  educated  classes.  Many  years  after,  when 
Mrs.  Frances  Anne  Kemble,  writing  in  refer 
ence  to  the  dramatic  stage,  pointed  out  that  the 
theatrical  instinct  of  Americans  created  in  them 
an  affinity  for  the  French  which  the  English, 
hating  exhibitions  of  emotion  and  self-display, 
did  not  share,  she  recognized  in  our  nation  this 
tinge  of  the  French  temperament,  while  perhaps 
giving  to  it  an  inadequate  explanation. 

in 

The  local  literary  prominence  given,  first  to 
Philadelphia  by  Franklin  and  Brockden  Brown, 
and  then  to  New  York  by  Cooper  and  Irving, 
was  in  each  case  too  detached  and  fragmentary 
to  create  more  than  these  individual  fames,  how 
ever  marked  or  lasting  these  may  be.  It  required 
time  and  a  concentrated  influence  to  constitute 
a  literary  group  in  America.  Bryant  and  Chan- 
ning,  with  all  their  marked  powers,  served 
only  as  a  transition  to  it.  Yet  the  group  was 
surely  coming,  and  its  creation  has  perhaps 
never  been  put  in  so  compact  a  summary  as 
that  made  by  that  clear-minded  ex-editor  of 
the  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  the  late  Horace  Scud- 
der.  He  said,  "  It  is  too  early  to  make  a  full 
survey  of  the  immense  importance  to  American 


AMERICAN   LITERATURE  377 

letters  of  the  work  done  by  half-a-dozen  great 
men  in  the  middle  of  this  century.  The  body 
of  prose  and  verse  created  by  them  is  consti 
tuting  the  solid  foundation  upon  which  other 
structures  are  to  rise ;  the  humanity  which  it 
holds  is  entering  into  the  life  of  the  country, 
and  no  material  invention,  or  scientific  discov 
ery,  or  institutional  prosperity,  or  accumulation 
of  wealth  will  so  powerfully  affect  the  spirit 
ual  well-being  of  the  nation  for  generations  to 
come." 

The  geographical  headquarters  of  this  par 
ticular  group  was  Boston,  of  which  Cambridge 
and  Concord  may  be  regarded  for  this  purpose 
as  suburbs.  Such  a  circle  of  authors  as  Emer 
son,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Whittier, 
Alcott,  Thoreau,  Parkman,  and  others  had  never 
before  met  in  America;  and  now  that  they  have 
passed  away,  no  such  local  group  anywhere 
remains:  nor  has  the  most  marked  individual 
genius  elsewhere  —  such,  for  instance,  as  that 
of  Poe  or  Whitman  —  been  the  centre  of  so 
conspicuous  a  combination.  The  best  literary 
representative  of  this  group  of  men  in  bulk 
was  undoubtedly  the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  to 
which  almost  every  one  of  them  contributed, 
and  of  which  they  made  up  the  substantial  open 
ing  strength. 

With  these  there  was,  undoubtedly,  a  sec- 


378  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

ondary  force  developed  at  that  period  in  a  re 
markable  lecture  system,  which  spread  itself 
rapidly  over  the  country,  and  in  which  most  of 
the  above  authors  took  some  part  and  several 
took  leading  parts,  these  lectures  having  much 
formative  power  over  the  intellect  of  the  nation. 
Conspicuous  among  the  lecturers  also  were 
such  men  as  Gough,  Beecher,  Chapin,  Whipple, 
Holland,  Curtis,  and  lesser  men  who  are  now 
collectively  beginning  to  fade  into  oblivion. 
With  these  may  be  added  the  kindred  force  of 
Abolitionists,  headed  by  Wendell  Phillips  and 
Frederick  Douglass,  whose  remarkable  powers 
drew  to  their  audiences  many  who  did  not  agree 
with  them.  Women  like  Lucretia  Mott,  Anna 
Dickinson,  and  Lucy  Stone  joined  the  force. 
These  lectures  were  inseparably  linked  with 
literature  as  a  kindred  source  of  popular  educa 
tion  ;  they  were  subject,  however,  to  the  limita 
tion  of  being  rather  suggestive  than  instructive, 
because  they  always  came  in  a  detached  way 
and  so  did  not  favor  coherent  thinking.  The 
much  larger  influence  now  exerted  by  courses 
of  lectures  in  the  leading  cities  does  more  to 
strengthen  the  habit  of  consecutive  thought 
than  did  the  earlier  system ;  and  such  courses, 
joined  with  the  great  improvement  in  public 
schools,  are  assisting  vastly  in  the  progress  of 
public  education.  The  leader  who  most  distin- 


AMERICAN    LITERATURE  379 

guished  himself  in  this  last  direction  was,  doubt 
less,  Horace  Mann,  who  died  in  1859.  The  in 
fluence  of  American  colleges,  while  steadily 
maturing  into  universities  all  over  the  country, 
has  made  itself  felt  more  and  more  obviously, 
especially  as  these  colleges  have  with  startling 
suddenness  and  comprehensiveness  extended 
their  privileges  to  women  also,  whether  in  the 
form  of  coeducation  or  of  institutions  for  women 
only. 

For  many  years,  the  higher  intellectual  train 
ing  of  Americans  was  obtained  almost  entirely 
through  periods  of  study  in  Europe,  especially 
in  Germany.  Men,  of  whom  Everett,  Ticknor, 
Cogswell,  and  Bancroft  were  the  pioneers,  be 
ginning  in  1818  or  thereabouts,  discovered  that 
Germany  and  not  England  must  be  made  our 
national  model  in  this  higher  education ;  and 
this  discovery  was  strengthened  by  the  number 
of  German  refugees,  often  highly  trained  men, 
who  sought  this  country  for  political  safety. 
The  influence  of  German  literature  on  the 
American  mind  was  undoubtedly  at  its  highest 
point  half  a  century  ago,  and  the  passing  away 
of  the  great  group  of  German  authors  then 
visible  was  even  more  striking  than  have  been 
the  corresponding  changes  in  England  and 
America ;  but  the  leadership  of  Germany  in 
purely  scientific  thought  and  invention  has  kept 


380  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

on  increasing,  so  that  the  mental  tie  between 
that  nation  and  our  own  was  perhaps  never 
stronger  than  now. 

In  respect  to  literature,  the  increased  tend 
ency  to  fiction,  everywhere  visible,  has  nowhere 
been  more  marked  than  in  America.  Since  the 
days  of  Cooper  and  Mrs.  Stowe,  the  recognized 
leader  in  this  department  has  been  Mr.  Howells ; 
that  is,  if  we  base  leadership  on  higher  stand 
ards  than  that  of  mere  comparison  of  sales. 
The  actual  sale  of  copies  in  this  department  of 
literature  has  been  greater  in  certain  cases  than 
the  world  has  before  seen ;  but  it  has  rarely 
occurred  that  books  thus  copiously  multiplied 
have  taken  very  high  rank  under  more  deliber 
ate  criticism.  In  some  cases,  as  in  that  of  Bret 
Harte,  an  author  has  won  fame  in  early  life  by 
the  creation  of  a  few  striking  characters,  and 
has  then  gone  on  reproducing  them  without 
visible  progress ;  and  this  result  has  been  most 
apt  to  occur  wherever  British  praise  has  come 
in  strongly,  that  being  often  more  easily  won 
by  a  few  interesting  novelties  than  by  anything 
deeper  in  the  way  of  local  coloring  or  perma 
nent  delineation. 

IV 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  there  was  never  yet 
a  great  migration  which  did  not  result  in  some 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  381 

new  form  of  national  genius ;  and  this  should 
be  true  in  America,  if  anywhere.  He  who  lands 
from  Europe  on  our  shores  perceives  a  differ 
ence  in  the  sky  above  his  head ;  the  height 
seems  greater,  the  zenith  farther  off,  the  hori 
zon  wall  steeper.  With  this  result  on  the  one 
side,  and  the  vast  and  constant  mixture  of  races 
on  the  other,  there  must  inevitably  be  a  change. 
No  portion  of  our  immigrant  body  desires  to 
retain  its  national  tongue ;  all  races  wish  their 
children  to  learn  the  English  language  as  soon 
as  possible,  yet  no  imported  race  wishes  its 
children  to  take  the  British  race,  as  such,  for 
models.  Our  newcomers  unconsciously  say  with 
that  keen  thinker,  David  Wasson,  "The  Eng 
lishman  is  undoubtedly  a  wholesome  figure  to 
the  mental  eye ;  but  will  not  twenty  million 
copies  of  him  do,  for  the  present  ?  "  The  Eng 
lishman's  strong  point  is  his  vigorous  insular 
ity  ;  that  of  the  American  his  power  of  adap 
tation.  Each  of  these  attitudes  has  its  perils. 
The  Englishman  stands  firmly  on  his  feet,  but 
he  who  merely  does  this  never  advances.  The 
American's  disposition  is  to  step  forward  even 
at  the  risk  of  a  fall.  Washington  Irving,  who 
seemed  at  first  to  so  acute  a  French  observer 
as  Chasles  a  mere  reproduction  of  Pope  and 
Addison,  wrote  to  John  Lothrop  Motley  two 
years  before  his  own  death,  "  You  are  properly 


382  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

sensible  of  the  high  calling  of  the  American 
press,  —  that  rising  tribunal  before  which  the 
whole  world  is  to  be  summoned,  its  history  to 
be  revised  and  rewritten,  and  the  judgment  of 
past  ages  to  be  canceled  or  confirmed."  For 
one  who  can  look  back  sixty  years  to  a  time 
when  the  best  literary  periodical  in  America 
was  called  "  The  Albion,"  it  is  difficult  to  real 
ize  how  the  intellectual  relations  of  the  two 
nations  are  now  changed.  M.  D.  Conway  once 
pointed  out  that  the  English  magazines,  such 
as  the  " Contemporary  Review"  and  the  "Fort 
nightly,"  were  simply  circular  letters  addressed 
by  a  few  cultivated  gentlemen  to  the  fellow 
members  of  their  respective  London  clubs. 
Where  there  is  an  American  periodical,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  most  striking  contribution  may 
proceed  from  a  previously  unknown  author,  and 
may  turn  out  to  have  been  addressed  practically 
to  all  the  world. 

So  far  as  the  intellectual  life  of  a  nation  ex 
hibits  itself  in  literature,  England  may  always 
have  one  advantage  over  us,  —  if  advantage  it 
be,  —  that  of  possessing  in  London  a  recog 
nized  publishing  centre,  where  authors,  editors, 
and  publishers  are  all  brought  together.  In 
America,  the  conditions  of  our  early  political 
activity  have  supplied  us  with  a  series  of  such 
centres,  in  a  smaller  way,  beginning,  doubtless, 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  383 

with  Philadelphia,  then  changing  to  New  York, 
then  to  Boston,  and  again  reverting,  in  some 
degree,  to  New  York.  I  say  "in  some  degree" 
because  Washington  has  long  been  the  political 
centre  of  the  nation,  and  tends  more  and  more 
to  occupy  the  same  central  position  in  respect 
to  science,  at  least;  while  Western  cities,  nota 
bly  Chicago  and  San  Francisco,  tend  steadily 
to  become  literary  centres  for  the  wide  regions 
they  represent.  Meanwhile  the  vast  activities 
of  journalism,  the  readiness  of  communication 
everywhere,  the  detached  position  of  colleges, 
with  many  other  influences,  decentralize  litera 
ture  more  and  more.  Emerson  used  to  say  that 
Europe  stretched  to  the  Alleghanies,  but  this 
at  least  has  been  corrected,  and  the  national 
spirit  is  coming  to  claim  the  whole  continent 
for  its  own. 

There  is  undoubtedly  a  tendency  in  the  United 
States  to  transfer  intellectual  .allegiance,  for  a 
time,  to  science  rather  than  to  literature.  This 
may  be  only  a  swing  of  the  pendulum  ;  but  its 
temporary  influence  has  nowhere  been  better 
denned  or  characterized  than  by  the  late  Clar 
ence  King,  formerly  director  of  the  United 
States  Geological  Survey,  who  wrote  thus  a  little 
before  his  death  :  "  With  all  its  novel  modern 
powers  and  practical  sense,  I  am  forced  to  ad 
mit  that  the  purely  scientific  brain  is  miserably 


384  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

mechanical ;  it  seems  to  have  become  a  splen 
did  sort  of  self-directed  machine,  an  incredible 
automaton,  grinding  on  with  its  analyses  or 
constructions.  But  for  pure  sentiment,  for  all 
that  spontaneous,  joyous  Greek  waywardness 
of  fancy,  for  the  temperature  of  passion  and  the 
subtler  thrill  of  ideality,  you  might  as  well  look 
to  a  wrought-iron  derrick." 

Whatever  charges  can  be  brought  against  the 
American  people,  no  one  has  yet  attributed  to 
them  any  want  of  self-confidence  or  self-esteem ; 
and  though  this  trait  may  be  sometimes  unat 
tractive,  the  philosophers  agree  that  it  is  the 
only  path  to  greatness.  "The  only  nations  which 
ever  come  to  be  called  historic,"  says  Tolstoi  in 
his  "Anna  Karenina,"  "are  those  which  recog 
nize  the  importance  and  worth  of  their  own  in 
stitutions."  Emerson,  putting  the  thing  more 
tersely,  as  is  his  wont,  says  that  "  no  man  can 
do  anything  well  who  does  not  think  that  what 
he  does  is  the  centre  of  the  visible  universe." 
The  history  of  the  American  republic  was  really 
the  most  interesting  in  the  world,  from  the 
outset,  were  it  only  from  the  mere  fact  that 
however  small  its  scale,  it  yet  showed  a  self- 
governing  people  in  a  condition  never  before 
witnessed  on  the  globe ;  and  so  to  this  is  now 
added  the  vaster  contemplation  of  it  as  a  nation 
of  seventy  millions  rapidly  growing  more  and 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  385 

more.  If  there  is  no  interest  in  the  spectacle  of 
such  a  nation,  laboring  with  all  its  might  to  build 
up  an  advanced  civilization,  then  there  is  nothing 
interesting  on  earth.  The  time  will  come  when 
all  men  will  wonder,  not  that  Americans  attached 
so  much  importance  to  their  national  develop 
ment  at  this  period,  but  that  they  appreciated 
it  so  little.  Canon  Zincke  has  computed  that  in 
1980  the  English-speaking  population  of  the 
globe  will  number,  at  the  present  rate  of  pro 
gress,  one  thousand  millions,  and  that  of  this 
number  eight  hundred  millions  will  dwell  in  the 
United  States.  No  plans  can  be  too  far-seeing, 
no  toils  and  sacrifices  too  great,  in  establishing 
this  vast  future  civilization.  It  is  in  this  light, 
for  instance,  that  we  must  view  the  immense 
endowments  of  Mr.  Carnegie,  which  more  than 
fulfill  the  generalization  of  the  acute  author  of 
a  late  Scotch  novel,  "The  House  with  Green 
Shutters,"  who  says  that  while  a  Scotchman 
has  all  the  great  essentials  for  commercial  suc 
cess,  "his  combinations  are  rarely  Napoleonic 
until  he  becomes  an  American." 

When  one  looks  at  the  apparently  uncertain, 
but  really  tentative  steps  taken  by  the  trus 
tees  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  at  Washington, 
one  sees  how  much  must  yet  lie  before  us  in 
our  provisions  for  intellectual  progress.  The  nu 
merical  increase  of  our  common  schools  and  uni- 


386  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

versities  is  perhaps  as  rapid  as  is  best,  and  the 
number  of  merely  scientific  societies  is  large, 
but  the  provision  for  the  publication  of  works 
of  real  thought  and  literature  is  still  far  too 
small.  The  endowment  of  the  Smithsonian  In 
stitution  now  extends  most  comprehensively 
over  all  the  vast  historical  work  in  American 
history,  now  so  widely  undertaken,  and  the 
Carnegie  Institution  bids  fair  to  provide  well  for 
purely  scientific  work  and  the  publication  of  its 
results.  But  the  far  more  difficult  task  of  de 
veloping  and  directing  pure  literature  is  as  yet 
hardly  attempted.  Our  magazines  tend  more 
and  more  to  become  mainly  picture-books,  and 
our  really  creative  authors  are  geographically 
scattered  and,  for  the  most  part,  wholesomely 
poor.  We  should  always  remember,  moreover, 
what  is  true  especially  in  these  works  of  fiction, 
that  not  only  individual  books,  but  whole  schools 
of  them,  emerge  and  disappear,  like  the  flash  of 
a  revolving  light ;  you  must  make  the  most  of 
it  while  you  have  it.  "The  highways  of  litera 
ture  are  spread  over,"  said  Holmes,  "  with  the 
shells  of  dead  novels,  each  of  which  has  been 
swallowed  at  a  mouthful  by  the  public,  and  is 
done  with." 

In  America,  as  in  England,  the  leading  lit 
erary  groups  are  just  now  to  be  found  less 
among  the  poets  than  among  the  writers  of 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  387 

prose  fiction.  Of  these  younger  authors,  we  have 
in  America  such  men  as  Winston    Churchill, 
Robert  Grant,  Hamlin  Garland,  Owen  Wister, 
Arthur  S.  Pier,  and  George  Wasson  ;  any  one 
of  whom  may  at  any  moment  surprise  us  by  doing 
something  better  than  the  best  he  has  before 
achieved.  The  same  promise  of  a  high  standard 
is  visible  in  women,  among  whom  may  be  named 
not  merely  those  of  maturer  standing,  as  Har 
riet  Prescott  Spofford,  who  is  the  leader,  but 
her  younger  sisters,  Mary  Wilkins   Freeman, 
Edith  Wharton,and  Josephine  Preston  Peabody. 
The  drama  also  is  advancing  with  rapid  steps, 
and  is  likely  to  be  still  more  successful  in  such 
hands  as   those  of    William   Vaughn    Moody, 
Ridgely   Torrence,  and  Percy   McKaye.    The 
leader  of  English  dramatic  criticism,  William 
Archer,  found  within  the  last  year,  as  he  tells 
us,  no  less  than  eight  or  nine  notable  American 
dramas  in  active  representation  on  the  stage, 
whereas  eight  years  earlier  there  was  but  one. 
Similar  signs  of  promise  are  showing  them 
selves  in  the  direction  of  literature,  social  sci 
ence,  and  higher  education  generally,  all  of  which 
have  an  honored  representative,  still  in  middle 
life,  in  Professor  George  E.  Woodberry.  Profes 
sor  Newcomb  has  just  boldly  pointed  out  that  we 
have  intellectually  grown,  as  a  nation,  "  from  the 
high  school  of  our  Revolutionary  ancestors  to 


388  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

the  college ;  from  the  college  we  have  grown 
to  the  university  stage.  Now  we  have  grown  to 
a  point  where  we  need  something  beyond  the 
university."  What  he  claims  for  science  is  yet 
more  needed  in  the  walks  of  pure  literature,  and 
is  there  incomparably  harder  to  attain,  since  it 
has  there  to  deal  with  that  more  subtle  and 
vaster  form  of  mental  action  which  culminates 
in  Shakespeare  instead  of  Newton.'  This  higher 
effort,  which  the  French  Academy  alone  even 
attempts,  —  however  it  may  fail  in  the  accom 
plished  results,  —  may  at  least  be  kept  before  us 
as  an  ideal  for  American  students  and  writers, 
even  should  its  demands  be  reduced  to  some 
thing  as  simple  as  those  laid  down  by  Coleridge 
when  he  announced  his  ability  to  "inform  the 
dullest  writer  how  he  might  write  an  interest 
ing  book."  "  Let  him,"  says  Coleridge,  "  relate 
the  events  of  his  own  life  with  honesty,  not  dis 
guising  the  feeling  that  accompanied  them."  * 
Thus  simple,  it  would  seem,  are  the  require 
ments  for  a  really  good  book ;  but,  alas !  who  is 
to  fulfill  them  ?  Yet  if  anywhere,  why  not  in 
America  ? 


Quarterly  Review,  xcviii,  456. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


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